Humans want their Earth back

 LAND OF THE DEAD (2005)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Originally viewed on June 24th, 2005

I must confess that I enjoy zombie movies. 2004's black-humored, scary spoof "Shaun of the Dead" and the remake of "Dawn of the Dead" were among the best the genre had to offer. So maybe George A. Romero, the father of the zombie genre, had been out of the loop for too long to come up with anything comparable or different. Not true. His "Night of the Living Dead" still scares the bejesus out of me, and his original "Dawn of the Dead" is more comical than frightening but still delivers an occasional shock or two. "Day of the Dead" left me wanting yet Romero's latest, "Land of the Dead," an
occasionally effective horror picture, is a marked improvement but no great success. It has Romero's personal stamp written all over it and the occasional satiric touches but its meaty themes need more, um, seasoning.

The movie begins with close-ups of zombies walking around an abandoned gas station (a prominent sign reads "Eats"). Our heroes, who are human, notice that the zombies are playing musical instruments, trying to fill up a gas tank, and so much more. Maybe these zombies are learning to adapt to their state of mind. Certainly Big Daddy is, a tall zombie with more brain cells than anyone else in the entire movie (he's played by Eugene Clark who has more presence than anyone else in the film). He knows how to communicate with others of his ilk, especially when humans are nearby watching them through binoculars. The flesh eaters even start to arm themselves against their human adversaries using a machine gun, a baseball bat, a meat cleaver, and so on. This is one of many original aspects that was hinted at in "Day of the Dead" - they can become the aggressors who have learned by observation (Well, Big Daddy has - he leads them and instructs them on how to fire a gun!) 

There are human mercenaries who work for the arrogant Kaufman (Dennis Hopper), an egotistical, wealthy man who hires them to keep zombies out (including the lower class starving denizens of the sparsely populated city). Kaufman and the rich live in a tower called Fiddler's Green, a luxurious paradise that seems out of place in a zombie-ridden city. One of the mercenaries, Cholo (John Leguizamo), wants to move in to this paradise but, hey, there's a long waiting list and the implications are that Cholo's ethnicity doesn't fit in with the upper class! There's also Riley (Simon Baker, from TV's "The Guardian"), the reliable head of the mercenary group, who wants to go north to Canada and get away from the madness. We also get a sweet-natured hooker named Slack (Asia Argento), who is saved by Riley before being eaten in a ring by two zombies while an audience watches! Yep, Romero seems to be saying once again that humans are no better than zombies - we use zombies for exploitation at a geek show (like the Roman gladiators did with humans, of course), which is rather sickening and apropos.

For zombie fans, Romero delivers plenty of gore and plenty of explosions (I think there are more explosions than scenes of zombies ripping out guts or eating fingers, though the unrated cut leaves a lot of the gore intact). We get numerous scenes of zombies used as target practice or as buffoons or sport for spectators. We also get the traditional scenes of zombies getting shot in the head. There is also a powerful armored vehicle named "Dead Reckoning" that is some sort of anti-zombie tank (no different
than the one used in the "Dawn" remake yet more stable). There are also those ads for Fiddler's Green that promise paradise for all, even if it is exclusively for the rich. And for fans of Tom Savini, he returns as a biker zombie carrying a machete.

I appreciate many things in "Land of the Dead" but I suppose that, in this steady diet of flesh eaters at the cinema, I expected so much more yet I was definitely not disappointed. Romero made something strangely eerie and unique with his original "Night of the Living Dead" - he painted a bleak picture of a world of indifference between humans. The last shot of that film always shook me and riveted me - it said more about humanity or inhumanity than any zombie film had the right to. Romero's "Dawn of the Dead" was about consumption of a material lifestyle - once you have all the material possessions at a shopping mall, what the heck is left? "Day of the Dead" began to show that zombies could evolve
with the proper help of doctors. I was hoping that "Land of the Dead" would evolve along those lines but it does so fitfully, not wholly. Don't get me wrong: "Land of the Dead" has some scares and is never boring. There is much here that relates to a post-9/11 world (did Cholo actually use the phrase
"jihad?") and nobody can stage gore like Romero can. I just sense that Romero had more to say and either chose not to or was forced to trim the film to a bare 93 minutes. It is slightly above average fare but you may wish there was more to, um, consume.

Mall walkers, beware

 DAWN OF THE DEAD (2004)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Originally viewed on April 3rd, 2004

The new "Dawn of the Dead" is a feverishly paced nightmare - a roller coaster ride of bloodcurling thrills and chills. Who would have thought that a zombie movie could be a roller coaster ride? This remake of the 1978 George Romero film is not better, just sharper, faster and, at times, scarier.

Immediately, in the film's pre-credit sequence, we are lured into a nightmare before we can say boo. Sarah Polley plays a nurse who hates to work overtime. She comes home to her beau, and all seems well after a long day at work. They make love in the shower and ignore the news warnings on television (amazing how many people leave their TV's without ever truly watching them). They should
have listened! People are running in the streets! Hysteria! Cars crashing into each other! Explosions in the distance! And what is all this, a new form of terrorism? Nope, people are turning into zombies, infected by bites from other zombies! More hysteria, especially when a young girl from the neighborhood bites the nurse's beau! Oh, my, what do we do now? What is especially frightening about this sequence is that it establishes an apocalypse brought on by an uncontrollable virus - it is nicely exemplified in an aerial shot where we see suburbia becoming a haven of chaos within minutes.
The nurse takes off in her car, runs into a barricade, is found by a cop (Ving Rhames), finds other survivors who are not zombies, and head to the local mall.

There they find a triad of mall security cops who want nothing to do with these survivors. But there is no time for macho bull as these zombies begin to proliferate. And they do not walk slowly or fall onto each other - they run like maniacs, eager for fresh flesh. Yes, a bit that may have been cribbed from
the imaginative, forceful "28 Days Later," but this movie is even scarier. There is no respite from the madness of these flesh eaters - they devour and shake and twist, but you can't keep a good zombie down for long. As more survivors enter the Mall of Refuge, they also forget the zombies as well. They
get on the roof and shoot any that look like celebrities, as well as another expert marksman staying above the roof of a gun shop. Will they ever escape? Is there any refuge on any island nearby?

"Dawn of the Dead" is pure, unmitigated horror, relentless and intense beyond belief. I swear that you will be clinging and crouching in your seats, waiting to see what new horror awaits these survivors. We see silhouetted garages, dank gun stores, brightly lit mall hallways, sprinklers, fences, trucks, chainsaws, and lots of guns - a necessity since a zombie can only be killed by a direct gunshot to the head. And for gore fans, there is some involving a pregnant woman strapped to a bed that may make you squirm worse than anything in "The Exorcist." There are also countless zombies mowed down and run over so often that it becomes numbing yet never flags attention (unlike the recent, thrill-less remake of "Texas Chainsaw Massacre").

First-time director Zack Snyder sets this Romero tale on overdrive, never stooping for such intricacies as character development or the consumerist satire of the original. But I am not too let down by this because the original "Dawn" is still a classic and it has its own feverish excitement - the mall
setting of that film opened up the story for some black humor. There is not much humor in the new "Dawn" but the characters, with certain exceptions, draw us into the chaos and we hope they survive their ordeal. Ultimately it is Sarah Polley, the intelligent actress from Atom Egoyan country, who rescues the film with authority, toughness and a sincerity that makes all the other characters seem like automatons by comparison (the actress is a Socialist, after all). Ving Rhames and Mekhi Phifer have great presence and share a terrific scene in the lavatory, discussing the hell they are confronting. And
the guy at the gun shop leaves us also hoping he gets out alive (in a touching moment, he communicates his hunger by writing on a white board). 

"Dawn of the Dead" is one of the best horror remakes ever made. It is one solidly hellbent ride, riding on full-throttle and delivering a pure adrenaline rush. And its apocalyptic urgency and sense of dread will leave you gasping for air. A hellish experience.

I love eating...BRAINS!

 THE RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD (1985)

An appreciation by Jerry Saravia

The first R-rated movie I saw in theaters by myself was "The Return of the Living Dead" back in good old 1985. I saw it at the now defunct Cinema City 5 theaters in Fresh Meadows, NY and I must say it was exciting to see an R-rated movie, let alone an R-rated horror flick (Today, aside from a few curse words, this movie would probably be rated PG-13). The lights went down and I was introduced to a whole new world of punk music, punk characters, a couple of chemical facility workers in their mid-50's, and rampaging zombies who ran and lunged themselves at victims (this is the first zombie flick to feature running zombies). Oh, yes, and the commonplace sight in TV and film screens in the 1980's, a nuclear explosion.

"The Return of the Living Dead" felt like a nuclear explosion, and it still is. It is chaotic from the first frame to the last with no end in sight of its unrelenting chaos and complete anarchy. The director Dan O'Bannon (his directorial debut) was influenced by director Howard Hawks' own chaos in his early screwball comedies. The movie begins with what we would now associate with Quentin Tarantino in terms of dialogue featuring meta associations with previous movies - James Karen (truly memorable) as a Darrow Chemical employee tells a new recruit (Thom Andrews) about how their basement has mistakenly delivered metal drums from the Army containing dead bodies. These bodies were the inspiration behind George Romero's "Night of the Living Dead" movie ("Did you know it was based on a true case?"). When Karen shows the incredulous kid these supposedly airtight drums, a green gaseous vapor shoots out and turns them, slowly but surely, into zombies. 

Clu Gulager (I love that he made this movie - he and James Karen give it an ounce of integrity) is the boss at Darrow Chemical Plant who investigates the chaos of reanimated corpses thanks to that green gas. More chaos ensues when Gulager and company try to convince the local moratorium's owner (bug-eyed Dan Calfa) to burn the reanimated corpse they chopped up (at first, Gulager tells Calfa they are "rabid weasels"). This creates more problems when the fumes start to resurrect the dead at the Resurrection Cemetery, which happens to be occupied by a punk party group who just want to party! The standout is Linnea Quigley as Trash, a girl who is fascinated and turned on by death. Quigley, true to form, does full frontal nudity dancing on top of a gravestone. The rest of the kids are distinctive enough in their look though not the most memorable, except for the punkish, leather-jacketed, chain-pierced rebel named Suicide (Mark Venturini) who is trying to make a statement with his look and supposedly has no interest in having sex with Trash! 

The zombies in this movie have ravenous appetites that includes mostly eating brains ("It takes away the pain of being dead," exclaims one limbless zombie). Oh, yeah, the zombies talk and always scream, "Brains!" For more intellectual types, this movie might be disposable B-movie trash. For me, there is terrifically timed black humor, solid performances, a tongue-in-cheek attitude, Linnea Quigley dancing naked, split dog specimens, and an explosive ending. I wouldn't call the ending uncompromising but it is unexpected. For a teen kid in the 1980's, this was a great R-rated movie. Now, it is simply a great horror comedy. 

Working the Graveyard Shift is more exciting

 GRAVEYARD SHIFT (1990)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Video Review detailing differences between the short story and the movie

There are slave-paying jobs that I do not regret ever being offered. A slaughterhouse would be one. A textile mill overrun with hundreds of possibly disease-carrying rats would be another. "Graveyard Shift," the worst Stephen King adaptation of a short story or novel I have ever seen, is so ugly, so mean-spirited and so dull that I wish I never sat through it. 

A somewhat aloof drifter named Hall (David Andrews) arrives in a small Maine town looking for work at the textile mill (he arrives by Greyhound bus). Stephen Macht is Warwick, the mean-spirited, truly vile boss who thinks nothing of smacking and punching his secretary in front of all the workers - he's sleeping with her to boot. This textile mill looks run down and the interior is not any improvement - rats dominate the basement where numerous other workers have died. Apparently, a monstrous rat bat (you read that right) devours its workers so, sure, you could say there is a worker shortage. Meanwhile Hall slings diet Pepsi cans at the rats, is teased by other workers, and starts to hang with Jane Wisconsky (Kelly Wolf) though their romantic interest only comes down to a simple kiss while they are sullied cleaning up the basement. The conclusion has all the workers working double time while this monster has its feeding time. I think quadruple pay would be warranted - let's speak to the union.

Brad Dourif appears as an overzealous exterminator (a character not present in the short story) and he is the one thrilling aspect to this dreary slog of a movie. The rats are disgusting and so are the people who are merely disposable, unsympathetic character types whom I would never want to meet. This execrable film is based on the collection of nail-biting short stories from Stephen King's "Night Shift." To say that this "Graveyard Shift" is worse than the "Maximum Overdrive" adaptation is being kind - it is the kind of movie you watch glimpses of on a TV monitor while working 11-7am and realize that your job is far more exciting.  

If you can't shoot the dead then it is like it didn't happen

 DIARY OF THE DEAD (2007)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

You could almost say, seen one zombie film, seen them all. George Romero's "Dead" series has nuances that go beyond mere fright factor of slow-walking zombies who are hungry for human flesh. "Diary of the Dead" is not as political as "Land of the Dead" and a bit more of a freak show yet it still shows Romero can swing this sort of uneasy horror with ease. I am just not sure he has anything new to say.

The film begins as an assembled edit of a found footage film called "The Death of Death," and that is the film we see for 90 minutes. The narrator is Debra (Michelle Morgan), one of the survivors of a group of college film students who are making a mummy movie in Pittsburgh. News reports roll in about a zombie apocalypse where people are eating each other - you know the drill. Jason Creed (Joshua Close) is the director of their mummy film and the found footage is mostly from his camera's point-of-view as he never puts it down, recording the shootings of the dead coming back to life. This group drives a Winnebago in what looks like a road trip to Scranton, Pennsylvania. We shouldn't forget that the group includes their teacher Maxwell (Scott Wentworth), who drinks booze and reacts with indifference at the sight of the dead. Maybe the booze numbs the senses but he also used to be in an unspecified war - Gulf War I perhaps? 

Nothing in "Diary of the Dead" is remotely new though there are a few scares (two made me jump out of my chair, one includes Debra's younger brother). The cast, all theatre actors, are not quite a memorable group but you still hope they get out of this bloody mess and all the entrails that follow (Scott Wentworth's teacher and Michelle Morgan's Debra stand out). The settings include a luxurious home with a secret room, a huge garage-like hideaway housing armed survivors, and an Amish barn (!) and they all keep the intensity going long enough until we get to an ending that, though still gripping with the sight of blood trickling like a teardrop from a severed head, is essentially recycled out of Romero's earlier Dead films. You know the lines that embody Romero's theme of man's inhumanity - we are no different from the dead because some of us might use the Dead as target practice. The film also suggests that we rather observe gory car accidents than help our fellow humans in any said accident. All this observation can only happen with a camcorder or else it doesn't exist. 

I respect George Romero and, for the most part, have enjoyed his zombie flicks. "Diary of the Dead" is enjoyable too and has enough moments of fright to elevate it above most others of its ilk. I just wish he would still find a newer angle like he did with the separation of the classes in "Land of the Dead." Here, it is all camera and surveillance technology that trumps humanity, only that conceit was hardly original in 2007 by way of ubiquitous found footage movies. Either way, decent horror fare and worth checking out for Romero fans.  

Third-Tier De Palma thriller

 DOMINO (2019)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

The last thing I expect from Brian De Palma, our Hitchcockian imitator who has shown a flair for more adult themes than the late Hitch, is a fair movie. Fair? Yes, just fair, just okay thriller dynamics from a director who has a flair for overhead shots and dynamic dolly shots in long takes that seem to run on forever. His newest film is a decent thriller called "Domino" with a mixed bag of tricks and only a few notable scenes for what is seemingly a rushed product rather than a full-fledged genuine thriller.

Just watching the opening scenes gave me the nagging feeling that someone else's hands had touched De Palma's project (and, according to the director, nothing is further from the truth). A Danish cop named Christian (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) has a cop partner named Lars (Soren Malling), who appears to be an unhappily married man. We sense that immediately as early scenes show Christian having dinner with the married couple, and later Lars is sitting in the dark contemplating his life as he ignores his wife who calls him. These scenes are edited so hastily that it was hard to get involved in them. Cut to Christian with a date and a wild night as he is ready to go back on the streets, and he leaves behind his gun! When the cop duo are out investigating a domestic dispute involving a Lybian with blood-stained shoes, Ezra Tarzi (Eriq Ebouaney from De Palma's "Femme Fatale"), chaos ensues as Ezra slits Lars' throat and Christian is hanging from the rafters of an apartment, you know "Vertigo"-style. 

Christian is taken off the Lars murder case for the unethical sin of abandoning his gun (say what?) that led to Lars' death (okay, I get it), and partners up with Alex (Carice van Houten), herself a former lover of Lars. Christian and Alex go to Brussels and then southern Spain to find Ezra and there is more up the sleeve than we realize when we are introduced to a smarmy CIA agent (Guy Pearce) who is actually looking for a truly dangerous terrorist, Sala Al Din (Mohammed Azaay). No surprise that Al Din has plans to kill as many people as he can at a bullfighting ring in Spain. Ezra wants Al Din dead, and so do the cops.

The only original angle to this messy, convoluted script is how Al Din has his fanatics set up their suicidal bombing - they are all livestreamed for all to see. This is further set up in the stirring, thrilling finale that shows De Palma's mastery of juxtaposing shots from alternate angles and alternate points-of-view to build suspense - few can do it better when it comes to cross-cutting from one specific location to the other.

Other than that, "Domino" is third-tier De Palma, though it is watchable and occasionally diverting yet the cast, with the exception of Guy Pearce and the powerful presence of Eriq Ebouaney, are a little flat.  The screenplay never quite develops its few ideas of ISIS using technology to make their terror accessible, and the character of Alex seems to have been left on the cutting room floor (the truth according to De Palma was that the troubled production was underfinanced and perhaps De Palma had more to shoot). The ending is puzzling as it repeats an earlier ISIS suicide bombing at a film festival - it left me wanting and perplexed. Okay De Palma thriller yet clearly lacking his mojo to distinguish it from the norm. 

Empty Hollywood Tale from the Front Line

 WHAT JUST HAPPENED (2008)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

I watched "What Just Happened" with such an air of indifference that I felt nothing during or after it was over. The film just sits there (a commonplace truth) but, in this case, it is the literal truth. "What Just Happened" has no zeal, no real satirical Hollywood targets we haven't seen skewered before, and actually nothing of real consequence to say. 

The ubiquitous Robert De Niro plays a movie producer losing his edge who needs a hit because he has two ex-wives and some children to support. Two film projects are in trouble - one is in post-production that involves the hideous killing of a dog that preview audiences are hating, and the other project has been given the green light yet the major star, Bruce Willis, refuses to shave his Grizzly Adams beard. Other than that, De Niro speeds his way through Los Angeles in time-lapse motion shots that grate the nerves, and wants one of his ex-wives back, played far too thanklessly by Robin Wright. 

Other than that, there is not much more to "What Just Happened" and that is a shame coming from a director like Barry Levinson. The film feels weightless and perfunctory and doesn't add much punch to its targets, you know, the soulless Hollywood game where money is the deciding factor. Geez, where have we heard that before? 1992's "The Player" is still the top of the ranks when it comes to Hollywood satire and how Hollywood producers behave (geez, even a mild Hollywood insider comedy like "The Muse" had more laughs). Nothing here feels like it has any real value or verve (truly, the book by Art Linson, "What Just Happened?: Bitter Hollywood Tales From the Front Line," must have some lifeline).

 De Niro appears and exists in the movie, and that is the best I can say for him. The only real life and blood of the film is Michael Wincott as an alcoholic, pill-popping, capricious film director who hates movie cliches and wants his integrity to remain firm (despite not having final cut) which includes the shooting of the dog at the conclusion of his movie. Speaking of firm, Catherine Keener provides plenty of it as a studio chief who wants the ending fixed. What Just Happened? A boring, empty movie, that's what.