George A. Romero (1940 - 2017)

The first time I saw NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD was on a cheap, grainy Goodtimes video purchased from K-Mart.  I was about ten years old, and I had no idea what I was getting into.  The movie kept me spellbound from beginning to end.  When I said that to George Romero years later, he didn’t believe me—because he believed that the film’s power derived entirely from the cultural context in which it was produced, a cultural context that existed a full decade before I was even born.  I tried to explain my love for his first movie, remembering how I watched it repeatedly as a teenager.

When I was about fourteen, I upgraded my VHS copy to the double-tape 25^th Anniversary Collector’s Set.  The second tape was an unedited, roundtable discussion with Romero, co-writer John Russo, and producers Russ Streiner and Karl Hardman.  In those days before bonus features were taken for granted, it felt like meeting the filmmakers.  I remember I got that anniversary edition for Christmas from a girl at school who liked me.  My best friend told her that the way to my heart was through horror movies.  (So true.)  

Later, I remember talking my dad into bringing home a big screen / projector from work so that I could watch the movie in more cinematic fashion.  I must have done that at least a dozen times.  Somehow, the grainy image and tinny sound just seemed to work better with a big screen.  I’ve always felt that watching NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD is like receiving a transmission from deep space.  The medium may be weak, but the message comes through loud and clear.

I had read about DAWN OF THE DEAD before I ever saw it—in VHS guides, and in Stephen King’s nonfiction book Danse Macabre.  When I finally watched the movie on video late one night, I thought it was the bleakest thing I’d ever seen.  Somehow, the garish colors and slapstick humor made it even more melancholy than NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD.   Then came DAY OF THE DEAD.  I saw it for the first time at home alone, in the early hours of a blizzard that (soon after the movie ended) killed the power to my neighborhood for more than a week, and trapped me inside with my family for days.  Although DAY is arguably the most despairing of Romero’s films, there’s something about it that has always been strangely comforting to me.  By way of explanation, I can only point to the Terry Alexander character, who lives—in his own mind, anyway—on a tropical island, far from all the dehumanizing habits of modern “civilization.”

I wrote my first tribute to Romero’s Dead trilogy in college and it quickly morphed into a chapter in my first book.  The book was newly published in August 2004, when I went to meet George Romero at the Horrorfind Convention in Baltimore.  I remember that he didn’t look the way I thought he’d look.  The photos I’d seen of him, in Paul R. Gagne’s excellent book The Zombies That Ate Pittsburgh, had been taken many years earlier.  Now he was slimmer, his hair was whiter, and he was wearing huge, black-rimmed, Coke-bottle glasses.  But the eyes and the smile were the same.  George Romero always radiated warmth and childlike glee.  Not what you’d expect from a guy who made his career off of the zombie apocalypse, right?  But, as anyone who ever met him will tell you, he was a big ol' teddy bear.

I nervously handed him a copy of my book, and he seemed genuinely humbled that I had written about him.  I’m not sure why; he was already a legend.  But he got flustered enough that he actually signed the wrong name on my DVD copy of NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (Millennium Edition, in case you’re keeping track).  As soon as he realized what he’d done (by comparing the newly-autographed DVD to the name on the book I’d given him), he was embarrassed… which, in turn, made me feel guilty.  All I’d wanted to do was to say “thanks,” not make the guy feel guilty for anything.  I tried to slink away, but his personal assistant followed me and took down my cell number, promising to get me a newly signed copy of the DVD before the weekend was over.   I told him not to worry, that I was just happy to have exchanged a few words with one of my heroes.

The next morning, I was eating breakfast with friends in the hotel lobby when my cell phone rang.  I recognized the exchange as a Baltimore number and assumed that it was a call from a friend who was planning to meet us at the convention that day.  Instead, the voice on the other end of the line said, “Hi Joe, it’s George Romero.”  The rest of the conversation is a little fuzzy.  He apologized, repeatedly, for signing the wrong name on my DVD, and confessed that his assistant hadn’t been able to find another copy at the convention.  (No surprise—since everyone at that convention wanted a signed copy of NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD.)   Then the conversation turned to the subject of LAND OF THE DEAD, which was in pre-production at that time.  I don’t think I was the one who brought it up, but I sure as hell seized an opportunity.  I asked if he might need a production assistant… or a zombie extra.  He gave me his home phone number and said to call him in a few days. 

Somehow, I managed to keep the conversation going.  I told him that I was getting on a plane to India in a few days.  He jokingly asked if I was fleeing the country before the Republican convention.  I laughed and said I was going to visit a friend, but would call as soon as I got back. 

In the end, I didn’t work on LAND OF THE DEAD.   When I returned from India, I called and talked to George’s wife.  She explained that, because the production had recently moved from Pittsburgh to Toronto, they couldn’t hire any additional American cast or crew members.  So that’s as close as I ever came to being a zombie in a George Romero movie.

On the up side, I got to interview him a few years later.  When I decided to turn my first book into a documentary film, George Romero was one of the first people I contacted, and he immediately agreed to do an interview.  In April 2008, he came to L.A. for a Fangoria convention and I made arrangements to sit and talk with him for about an hour and a half.  When he rolled in to the interview, he was tired and jetlagged—but by the end, he was a live wire, laughing heartily.  One of the liveliest parts of the interview was an exchange about the Howard Hawks movie THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD, a childhood favorite that he insisted was “all about opening doors.” My documentary editor subsequently turned it into one of the most memorable segments of the doc.

Sometime later, I ran across a passage in a book on Howard Hawks that reminded me of the exchange.  The passage revealed that Romero’s observations about THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD had been shared by another remarkable filmmaker, Ernst Lubitsch.  I promptly sent George an email, which read in part:

 

A few days later, he responded with the following message:

 

It’s clear that the curious and mischievous twelve-year-old in George Romero remained alive and well throughout his life.  And it's reassuring to know that, even though the filmmaker has now disappeared behind the door, that twelve-year-old boy will continue to live on in his films—and in the hearts of all us movie geeks who love the films, and who came to love the man too.

Godspeed, George.

THE WICKED WEST

 

A few years ago, I decided to write a followup to my 2004 book Nightmares in Red, White and Blue, a cultural study of American horror films. 

At first, I imagined it as a book about horror remakes, reboots and “re-imaginations”—because those were dominating the genre at the time.  (This was somewhere in the lull between “torture porn” and PARANORMAL ACTIVITY.)   I outlined the book, started doing research, and even wrote a first chapter… then changed my mind.

When I came back around to the project a year or two later, I decided to make it a book entirely about supernatural / metaphysical horror films—focusing especially on films made since the mid-1980s.  I had been working for several years on a Discovery Channel series called A HAUNTING, which seemed to be in line with the latest trends in the horror genre, and I had strong opinions about why and how such stories work.  So I started writing.  Again I created a full outline, did some in-depth research, and completed a first chapter.  I was feeling pretty good about it, but somewhere along the line I got distracted.

One of the things that distracted me was exploring L.A.  Every weekend, my wife and I would go hiking at scenic spots in and around the city, and I quickly realized that every scenic spot in and around L.A. has been featured in a movie at some point.  Many of the more remote locations have a long history of use as filming locations, especially in westerns.  Although I had never been a particular fan of westerns—I naively thought it was a genre built on clichés—visiting these filming locations prompted me to start watching some studio-era westerns I'd never seen.  I found a great old-fashioned video store called Eddie Brandt’s Saturday Matinee that had a lot of stuff never released on DVD.  After that I was hooked.

Somehow, over the next few years, my prospective horror book became a book about westerns.  Initially, I thought of it as “a book about the other great American film genre about violence."  I had an idea that westerns generally presented a very conservative perspective on violence, while horror films are more liberal.  But that simplistic notion disappeared once I actually started watching the movies.  My hope is that end result of my cinematic exploration will be a compelling introduction to the genre for people like me: members of a certain generation (raised on action, horror and sci-fi films) who have never really given westerns a chance. 

2015 was a big year for westerns.  Films like THE HATEFUL EIGHT, THE REVENANT, and BONE TOMAHAWK made a big impression on younger moviegoers—in part, I think, because they aren't what we expect from westerns.  They are adventures, thrillers, horror films.  But still westerns.  Personally, I don’t believe that any genre is ever pure.  I can’t write about the horror genre without also writing about psychological thrillers and dark sc-fi, and sometimes even comedy.  I don’t think anyone can, or should, write about westerns in this day in age without also considering “hidden westerns” that are more readily identified with other genres.  (I borrow the term "hidden westerns" from filmmaker John Carpenter, who has made more than his fair share of hidden westerns.) 

When I started obsessing about westerns, I noticed that the most comprehensive and authoritative books on the subject tend to assume that the genre basically died in the mid-1970s, with maybe a few gasps of new life in the early 90s and late 2000s.  Being a horror fan, of course I love the idea that the western genre is undead… returned from the grave, somehow transformed by its years in purgatory.  Hence the title of my book: The Quick, The Dead and the Revived.

It’s not a book about horror-westerns.  It’s a book about the most intelligent and influential western films from 1939 to 2010, in the same way that Nightmares and Red, White and Blue was about the most intelligent and influential American horror films from 1931 to 2000.  I tried to examine all of the classic A-westerns.  There are three chapters alone on the 1950s, the decade that produced the most iconic films in the genre.  There’s also a chapter on spaghetti westerns, as well as chapters on urban westerns of the 1970s, space westerns of the 1980s, neo-westerns of the 1990s, and the postmodern westerns of the 2000s.  I think the book proves, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the genre remains vital—if still somewhat hidden and underappreciated.

Now, because I know that my name on a book cover is probably not going to draw my fellow horror fans to the western genre, I want to point to some places where the two genres overlap in interesting ways.  I think most horror enthusiasts are vaguely aware of the more overt attempts to blend the two genres—mostly B-movies and DTV features about ghosts, vampires and zombies in the Old West.  Stuff like CURSE OF THE UNDEAD (1959), BILLY THE KID VS. DRACULA (1966), Charles Band’s GHOST TOWN (1988), DEAD NOON (2007) with Kane Hodder, etc.  I’m not a big fan of that type of horror-western.  I prefer more subtle overlaps.

Gary Cooper and Boris Karloff in UNCONQUERED

For example, I can’t watch Cecil B. DeMille’s western UNCONQUERED (1947), which stars Boris Karloff as the villainous Chief of the Seneca Indians, without thinking about how DeMille typecast Karloff as another “monster.”  (UNCONQUERED is a very un-PC movie.)  In a similar way, I can’t help but think of John Carradine’s performance as a rather effete Dracula (in HOUSE OF FRANKENSTEIN and HOUSE OF DRACULA) when I watch him in westerns.  And Carradine was in a lot of westerns, including some of John Ford's best work.  Likewise, Lon Chaney Jr.—best known for his performance in THE WOLF MAN and its sequels—made more western films than anything else, right up to the very end of his career.  Even Vincent Price dabbled in the genre, most notably in Sam Fuller’s THE BARON OF ARIZONA (1950).

My favorite early horror movies are those that came out of RKO in the 1940s, under the auspices of producer Val Lewton and directors Jacques Tourneur and Robert Wise.  So I was thrilled to find that Lewton’s only western, APACHE DRUMS (1951), plays like a forerunner to George Romero’s NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD.  (I was, in fact, so excited that I emailed Romero to ask if he’d ever seen it.  He said he hadn’t.)  Tourneur and Wise also made their own forays into the western genre.  Tourneur’s STARS IN MY CROWN (1950) is only marginally a western, but it’s a personal favorite of mine.  I think of it as an Old West version of Ray Bradbury’s Dandelion Wine, although STARS was made a few years before Bradbury wrote his novel.  Wise directed one of my favorite noir westerns, BLOOD ON THE MOON (1948), starring Robert Mitchum, as well as one of the most intense westerns of that time period, TWO FLAGS WEST (1950).  And speaking of noir westerns…

There are some obvious crossovers of film noir and the western films.  Hardboiled detectives on dusty streets, that kind of thing.  But I don't want to name them, because much prefer straight westerns that have a streak of dark naturalism or fatalism in them.  I love vaguely metaphysical westerns like PURSUED (1947), YELLOW SKY (1948), and COLORADO TERRITORY (1949), so I wrote an entire chapter about these psychological / noir westerns in my book.  

Robert Mitchum in the noir western BLOOD ON THE MOON

Once you get to American cinema in the 1950s, it’s almost impossible to avoid talking about westerns.  It was by far the most popular genre of the day, in film and in television—although science fiction gave it a good run for its money.   That said, it should come as no surprise that some of the best-known sci-fi and horror filmmakers of the day made some pretty innovative westerns. 

Andre De Toth is primarily remembered as the director of the 3-D Vincent Price vehicle HOUSE OF WAX (1953), but he was actually more of a western enthusiast than a horror enthusiast.  John Ford personally recommended him to direct RAMROD (1947), and De Toth cast his wife Veronica Lake in the lead female role, opposite Joel McCrea.  De Toth went on to make six more western films with screen cowboy Randolph Scott in the 1950s, plus one with Gary Cooper (SPRINGFIELD RIFLE, 1952) and one with Kirk Douglas (THE INDIAN FIGHTER, 1955). He rounded out the decade with one of my personal favorites, DAY OF THE OUTLAW (1959)—a particularly bleak film featuring one of Robert Ryan's best performances.

Andre de Toth

Jack Arnold—the man behind Universal’s monster movies IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE (1953) CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON (1954), and TARANTULA (1955)—made MAN IN THE SHADOW (1957) starring Orson Welles as a cold-hearted rancher, Audie Murphy’s best western NO NAME ON THE BULLET (1959), and the blaxploitation western BOSS NIGGER (1974) with Fred Williamson.

William Castle and Roger Corman each made several westerns in the 50s, although the merits of those films are debatable.  Some have argued that Corman’s directorial debut, FIVE GUNS WEST (1955), was the inspiration for ensemble action movies like THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN and THE DIRTY DOZEN.  Corman himself, however, was quick to abandon the genre—although he later produced two compelling westerns from director Monte Hellman, THE SHOOTING (1966) and RIDE IN THE WHIRLWIND (1966), both starring Jack Nicholson.  And I’ve always been fascinated by Corman’s claim that he helped to develop the Gregory Peck vehicle THE GUNFIGHTER (1950), one of the most iconic westerns ever made, when he was still a lowly script reader at Fox. 

Jack Nicholson and Millie Perkins in THE SHOOTING

Edgar G. Ulmer is not as well known as Castle or Corman (although his following seems to grow every year) but he made a western that is more interesting than anything either of them did in the genre.  I’m not sure what to say about THE NAKED DAWN (1955), except that if you are a fan of Ulmer’s work (which includes Universal’s THE BLACK CAT and DETOUR), you should definitely check it out.  It's a unique film in the genre.  Ditto Ray Milland’s directorial debut A MAN ALONE (1955), a very strange—eerily effective—little western.  And while we’re on the subject of strange…. Did you know that Rod Serling wrote a western?  It’s called SADDLE THE WIND (1958), and it’s pretty good…. Although not as good as some of the western episodes Serling wrote for THE TWILIGHT ZONE.   Serling also reportedly wrote an early draft of Marlon Brando’s ONE-EYED JACKS (1961), but we probably shouldn’t give him credit—or assign him blame—for that one.

Gene Fowler Jr. is another name that is familiar to classic horror fans.  He directed the cult classics I WAS A TEENAGE WEREWOLF (1957) and I MARRIED A MONSTER FROM OUTER SPACE (1958).  He also directed SHOWDOWN AT BOOT HILL (1958), a respectable B-western that gave Charles Bronson his first lead role and paved the way for Roger Corman to cast Bronson in a comparable breakout role in MACHINE-GUN KELLY (1958).  Even more striking are Fowler’s credits as an editor.  He worked on Fritz Lang’s WESTERN UNION (1941), Sam Fuller’s RUN OF THE ARROW (1957) and FORTY GUNS (1957), Clint Eastwood’s first American western HANG ‘EM HIGH (1968), and the controversial A MAN CALLED HORSE (1970).  

Charles Bronson and John Carradine in SHOWDOWN AT BOOT HILL

Italian westerns are, of course, some of the most violent and horrific westerns around, reflecting a backlash against the genre in the late 60s and early 70s.  Horror icons like Mario Bava, Dario Argento and Lucio Fulci were part of the trend.  Bava directed one of the many pseudo-sequels to the immensely popular RINGO (RINGO IN NEBRASKA, 1966), as well as the western-comedy ROY COLT AND WINCHESTER JACK (1970).  Not his best work, but entertaining.  In addition to creating storyboards for the opening sequence of Sergio Leone’s ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST (1968), Argento co-wrote the Zapata western THE FIVE MAN ARMY (1969) and the ultra-violent CEMETERY WITHOUT CROSSES (1969).  According to some sources, he was also involved with CUT-THROATS NINE (1972).  Fulci likewise has three hyper-violent westerns to his name: MASSACRE TIME (1966), FOUR OF THE APOCALYPSE (1975) and—depending on who you ask—A BULLET FOR SANDOVAL (1969). 

As far as I’m concerned, FOUR OF THE APOCALYPSE is the nastiest postscript on the spaghetti western subgenre—although Sergio Corbucci’s THE GREAT SILENCE (1968) remains the best.  Others point to DJANGO, KILL! (1967) as the darkest Italian horror-western.  It's certainly the weirdest.  And there’s no question that DEATH RIDES A HORSE (1966), one of Quentin Tarantino’s favorites, is filled with indelible horror imagery.  These films all influenced increasingly dark and bloody American westerns, like WELCOME TO HARD TIMES (1967), THE STALKING MOON (1968), SOLDIER BLUE (1970) and Robert Aldrich’s ULZANA’S RAID (1972).  

Did I mention Robert Aldrich’s other westerns?  The filmmaker who gave us WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE? (1962) and HUSH… HUSH, SWEET CHARLOTTE (1964) also gave us APACHE (1954) and VERA CRUZ (1954), both starring Burt Lancaster.  I remember when I went to the Deaville Film Festival in 2009 with my NIGHTMARES IN RED, WHITE AND BLUE documentary, the thing I was most excited about was the fact that they were screening all three of Aldrich’s major westerns.  The French still appreciate this genre, even if most (younger) Americans don’t. 

I could go on.  Christopher Lee co-starred in a British-Spanish western that pioneered the rape-revenge subgenre (HANNIE CAULDER, 1971).  Charles Bronson starred in a Native American version of JAWS (THE WHITE BUFFALO, 1977).  PSYCHO’s Anthony Perkins made an excellent law-and-order western with Henry Fonda (THE TIN STAR, 1957).  HALLOWEEN’s Donald Pleasance played terrifying villains in the revisionist westerns WILL PENNY (1967) and SOLDIER BLUE (1970).  John Carpenter has written several westerns, including an early script that was optioned by John Wayne’s production company (and later made--badly--as BLOOD RIVER, 1991).  I’d argue that Wes Craven made a western (THE HILLS HAVE EYES, 1977).  George Romero's most recent Dead movie (SURVIVAL OF THE DEAD, 2009) was an homage to the Gregory Peck western THE BIG COUNTRY (1958).  The list goes on and on, and I’ve included many these titles in my book. 

So, horror fans… welcome to The Wicked West.  Read on.

Book review: THE MAKING OF GEORGE A. ROMERO'S DAY OF THE DEAD

 
It's hard to explain my love of George Romero's DAY OF THE DEAD in a rational way.  I remember years ago, I was housesitting for some friends in London.  I had been there all summer and I was starting to feel pretty homesick.  Then I discovered that among their video tapes--which were mostly staid BBC productions--was an old copy of DAY OF THE DEAD.  I'm not sure why it was there.  I doubt that these particular friends had ever seen a George Romero movie, let alone bought one.  All I could figure was that some previous housesitter had left the tape behind... which was kind of amazing, because it was one of only a few movies that, in that moment, could have cured my homesickness. 

Last year, when Romero came to L.A. to promote the re-release of John Harrison's DAY OF THE DEAD sountrack, I told him this story, rambling excitedly about how there's something wonderfully romantic about Harrison's score and Terry Alexander's pivotal monologue.  I concluded, "I know this sounds crazy, but DAY OF THE DEAD is a kind of comfort food for me." Over the years, Romero has said that he understands why some purists prefer NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, and why most fans prefer DAWN OF THE DEAD (as Robin Wood once said, it's the most fun), but he still aligns himself with those "mutants" who really like DAY.  In response to my awkward confession of love for his redheaded step-zombie, he shrugged and said, "Me too."

In Lee Karr's new book The Making of George A. Romero's Day of the Dead, Romero elaborates on his reasons for loving the finished film.  He claims "it's much more me than any of the other ones," noting that it captures both his personal philosophy and his droll humor.   That's ironic since DAY is not the film that he originally intended to make.  Most Romero fans know that filmmaker conceived his third zombie movie as a more epic story, then had to pare down his vision to match a smaller budget.  For some people, like Greg Nicotero (who worked his very first film industry job in the special effects department on DAY), this is a tragedy.  For others, like lead actress Lori Cardille, it was a blessing in disguise.  Cardille says that the final version of DAY is better because it's more character-driven.  The original script has been floating around online for a few years now and, having read it, I'm inclined to agree with the latter opinion.  Still, I can understand why Romero may have been initially disappointed.  After DAWN OF THE DEAD, fans expected him to go big or go home.  He went home... and made DAY OF THE DEAD. 

Karr's book reminds us that there were other sources of tension around the production.  DAY marked the end of Romero's long, successful collaboration with producer Richard Rubenstein.  Without Rubenstein's business savvy, Romero might not have made another film after THE CRAZIES.  The underperformance of his first four films at the box office did not make the filmmaker look like a particularly sound financial investment, but Rubenstein nevertheless supported Romero's vision for MARTIN.  For the next ten years, they were a perfect match, turning out one classic film after another.  In the mid-80s, they decided to go their separate ways.  Romero claims it was because he wanted to keep pursuing film projects, while Rubenstein wanted to focus on television (specifically, the "Tales from the Darkside" anthology series). 

One of the results of this parting of ways was that Romero became separated from several horror properties that Rubenstein controlled -- including Stephen King's PET SEMATARY, IT and THE STAND.... not to mention Romero's own DAWN and DAY OF THE DEAD (hence the insulting 2005 DAY sequel).  I can't help imagining how different the 90s might have been for Romero if he had maintained the relationship.  Of course, my fanboy conjecture is willfully ignorant of the details of Romero and Rubenstein's personal and professional relationship.  Filmmaking is an intensely collaborative art, and certain types of tension can be creatively beneficial for a project while other types of tension can be destructive on many different levels.  That's one of the basic, but often overlooked, realities of filmmaking that comes across strongly in Lee Karr's book. 

As I started reading the book, I found myself thinking: I'm not sure I want to know all of the details in this book, because it might affect the way I think of the people involved and change the way I watch one of my favorite films.  Assistant director Michael Gornick, who found himself caught in the middle of the Romero-Rubenstein divide, cautions: "I love the Steelers, man, but I know in the locker room some shit goes down!"  This is an apt epigraph for a long gossipy section in the beginning of the book that makes Tom Savini sound like a deeply insecure, sadistic asshole.  At the end of the day, I don't care if that's true or not.   It won't change the way I watch his films. 

Thankfully the book doesn't often veer off track like this, and the author should be praised for his amazingly thorough research.  Karr obviously tracked down anyone and everyone who had any kind of assocation with the film.  Building on production notes and call sheets provided by Greg Nicotero, he provides a comprehensive perspective on the making of this cult classic, as remembered by the people who actually made it.

Reading the book reminded me of my own experiences of working on sets.  I have found that making a movie or a TV show can be inspiring and exhilarating... when it's not hopelessly, soul-suckingly boring.  You spend countless hours, day and night, standing around waiting for a few minutes of creative adrenaline.  At some point, everyone gets tired and frustrated.  Tempers flare.  Accidents happen.  Even the most inspired productions seem to unfold like an ill-fated high school romance.  You love it.  You hate it.  You love it and hate the person standing next to you.  You hate it and love the person standing next to you.  You can no longer remember who you are in the world outside of this strange, all-consuming endeavor.  Life becomes fantasy and, when it's all over, you wonder: Did that really happen?  That's when the nostalgia settles in.

By the end of the book, I felt like I had actually been on the set of DAY OF THE DEAD, like I was part of the tension and the camaraderie.  You don't get that feeling from a behind-the-scenes documentary, with the rare exceptions of something like Roy Frumkes's DOCUMENT OF THE DEAD or Brad Shellady's TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE: A FAMILY PORTRAIT.  The Making of George A. Romero's Day of the Dead offers a priveleged insider's view combined with a die-hard fan's obsessive attention to detail.  For someone who loves DAY OF THE DEAD, it's a Christmas present on Halloween morning.  Set decorator Jan Puscale sums up the spirit of the season: "It was a zombie movie.  But every single thing mattered to us and we really all put our hearts into it, you know?"

Thanks to this book: Yes, we do.

MOVIES MADE ME #38: NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD

This is my prologue to a series of essays I've written about the films of George A. Romero. I thought I'd post it in celebration of the director's birthday. I hope to see the entire series published later this year...

The first time I saw George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (1968) was in the early 1990s on home video. It was a cheap, public domain copy with abysmal sound and picture quality. Sometimes I wonder if my initial interest was partly due to the grittiness of that copy. I watched it on a small black and white TV, the way Ben (the main character in the film) watches the world collapsing on a small black and white TV. I was twelve or thirteen years old, and it wasn’t hard for me to suspend my disbelief and imagine that the everyday world no longer existed outside my own bedroom window. In a way, that scenario was utterly terrifying. In another way, it seemed like a potential blessing.

I must have watched Night of the Living Dead a dozen times before I moved on to the sequels, Dawn of the Dead (1978) and Day of the Dead (1985). Dawn was epic by comparison – revealing a civilization at the height of its struggle for survival; Day returned to the original vision, showcasing humanity in the throes of defeat. On the night I watched the third film, an ice storm swept through the small Virginia town where I grew up. It knocked out the power and buried our house. My parents and my younger brother gathered in the living room, and huddled in sleeping bags around the fireplace. After everyone else fell asleep, I sat listening to AM radio news on my Walkman until the batteries ran down. The storm kept us confined within the neighborhood for over a week, and all the while I kept wondering what it would be like if the snow never melted. My parents wouldn’t go back to work. My brother and I wouldn’t go back to school. A much smaller community would take shape, and we’d have to talk to each other and trust each other as never before. We’d undoubtedly come to appreciate each other more, because in such a small world there would be fewer distractions. Questions about life and death, meaning and morality would be discussed openly, because human life would be stripped down to its essence: not just survival but survival for a purpose. Part of me still yearns for such a fate... though, of course, it would be nice if that kind of world came without the zombies.

George Romero hopes that zombies can change the world for the better by forcing us to focus on what’s really important. Without that kind of immediate threat, we return to mundane habits. This truth is illustrated by the later films in Romero’s series – Dawn, Day and Land of the Dead (2004) – as well as the British satire Shaun of the Dead (2006). Herein lies the hidden meaning of Romero’s apocalypse: The force that really turns us into “zombies” is civilization. When we become too preoccupied with work, money, politics, news, weather and sports, we forget about intimacy and humanity. It’s no secret that Romero himself prefers the zombies to many of the humans in his films. The zombies may be uncivilized, but at least they’re not over-civilized.

When I had the chance to interview the director in 2008, I told him that his Dead films had exerted a profound influence on my life. He seemed genuinely surprised, and maybe even a bit concerned about my claim. How, he asked, could a cheap zombie movie made in 1968 have such an impact on someone who came of age in the 1990s? To Romero, Night of the Living Dead is inextricably linked with the zeitgeist of the late 1960s. “In my mind,” he told me, “most of the power it has relates to the time that it was made… and the anger of that time… and the disappointment of that time.” Since I didn’t personally experience 1960s America, obviously I can’t fully understand the film in that context. But something else he said made me realize that I experienced Night of the Living Dead in a different but equally powerful context. While explaining that his Dead films are really about the human characters and the ways they inevitably “screw up” their chance to start a new and better world, he said, “The zombies could be any natural disaster.”

I suddenly remembered that, in high school, I’d frequently had nightmares about natural disasters. In one particular dream, a hundred-foot-high tsunami descended on the hotel in Virginia Beach where my family was vacationing. That was the most familiar image of nature in revolt that my imagination could conjure. Had I grown up on the West Coast, I might have dreamed of an earthquake or a volcano. If I lived in Middle America, it might have been a tornado or an all-consuming dust storm. Such dreams reveal the fear of death at its most basic: We cannot escape nature. Death is as natural as life, and physical survival is a game that we all lose eventually. The only way to survive, I figured, was to assess what was really important in life, and then live with a clear purpose.

As a precocious teenager, I didn’t know how to talk about such things with friends and family. With the exception of a few late-night (often drug-induced) conversations, the ideas seemed too abstract for the world I was living in… and yet I couldn’t let them go. Neither could Romero. The filmmaker explains that this was his basis for Night of the Living Dead: “What would be a really earth-shattering thing that would be revolutionary and that people would refuse to ignore? The dead… stop… staying… dead.” Actually, it’s even more dramatic than that. Romero adds with a grin, “Oh and there’s one thing more… They like to eat living people!”

Happy birthday, George!

MOVIES MADE ME #4: THE TIME MACHINE

I saw THE TIME MACHINE for the first time in my 7th grade Social Studies class, complete with introduction by Mr. Dexter Jackson – the only 7th grade Social Studies teacher on Earth who could make plaid shirts and polka dot ties look cool. To this day, I’m still not sure why he showed us that film. At the end, we had to write a short essay about which three books we would have taken back to the world of the Eloi… but as far as I could tell, this had nothing to do with his curriculum. Maybe he just needed a break so that he could catch up on grading papers. Whatever the case, no one was complaining. Movies are always more popular than lectures.

I have to admit that I wasn’t sold on THE TIME MACHINE right away. The first twenty minutes or so consisted mostly of drawing room conversation, and I couldn’t help comparing these sequences to the comparatively fast-paced BACK TO THE FUTURE. (Nevermind that BACK TO THE FUTURE takes the science out of science fiction.) George Pal’s pinwheel sled device may not be as cool-looking as a nuclear DeLorean, but – once it gets going – Rod Taylor’s trip was much more daring. He didn’t just go back a few decades and hit on his mother, he went eight hundred centuries into the future and picked up Yvette Mimieux. Now that’s time-traveling! Also, there's something about George Pal's time-lapsed photography that is far more hypnotic than all of Robert Zemeckis's higher-tech fireworks.

When I re-watched THE TIME MACHINE a few nights ago, it reminded me less of BACK TO THE FUTURE than of George Romero’s films DAWN OF THE DEAD (1978) and DAY OF THE DEAD (1985). Think about it this way: One of the earliest Hollywood forerunners of Romero’s concept of the modern zombie as a symbol is William Cameron Menzies’ 1936 adaptation of the H.G. Wells story THINGS TO COME. That film – itself a forerunner of all the atomic anxiety movies of the 1950s – speculates that global warfare will infect the human population with a “wandering sickness” and drive humanity back into the dark ages. By 1970, the film theorizes, half of the human population will be eradicated. (Despite this, anti-war protesters will be punished as “traitors to civilization”... Sound familiar?) The film proposes that science will come to the rescue, rebuilding the old order by 2036… but youthful idealists will want to do more than simply re-build things as they were before. The heroes of the film eventually escape into outer space just as the heroes of DAY OF THE DEAD flee their subterranean shelter in favor of a tropical island where they can live in peace, away from the anxious power politics of “civilization.”

THE TIME MACHINE, like DAWN OF THE DEAD, shows us an apparent utopia in which humans are free from all of the possible hardships of life… then reveals that this too is a horrible fate. Humankind has been divided into two tribes: picture-perfect hippies called Eloi, and albino cave trolls called Morlocks. The Eloi live in a lush tropical wonderland (time has mysteriously transformed London into a bountiful garden in Southern California), but the ease of living has made them dull and lazy. The Morlocks live underground, where they have built machines to catch their food… namely, the Eloi. To put this in terms that a Romero fan can understand, the Morlocks have become cannibals and the Eloi have become zombies. For me, one of the most memorable scenes in the film is the one in which Yvette Mimieux lulls Rod Taylor (and us) into a trance-like infatuation with her world. "Don't your people ever speak of the past?" he asks. She answers, "There is no past." Dumbfounded, he follows up, "Well, do they ever wonder about the future?" "There is no future," she answers. In short, the Eloi have lost their humanity, and it’s up to Rod Taylor to teach them how to become human again. At the end of the film, the traveler returns to his own time (1899) and retrieves three books to use as guides for re-creating human civilization.

As I remember it, a lot of people in my Social Studies class picked the Bible as one of the three books. A few people proposed the Farmer’s Almanac. I think I might have suggested The Complete Works of William Shakespeare… which probably would have made H.G. Wells happy. But what I really want to know is: What three books would George Romero pick? (Aside from Max Brooks’ Zombie Survival Guide, of course…)

HALLOWEEN COUNTDOWN: The 1930s

With the DVD release of NIGHTMARES IN RED WHITE AND BLUE looming, I thought I’d spend the next few weeks highlighting some great horror films that aren’t included in the documentary. In 96 minutes, NIRWAB references approximately 250 films… but, of course, this barely scratches the surface of “classic horror.” With that in mind, I’ve given myself a task for the weeks leading up to Halloween. For each decade between the 1930s and the 2000s, I’m going pick ten additional films to highlight. And since there are plenty of great horror films that I haven’t even seen yet, I’m also going to review a pair of films from each decade that are completely new to me. Let the Countdown to Halloween begin!

Universal's DRACULA (1931) made the commercial appeal of “morbid” supernatural fantasy immediately apparent, and the studio was eager to duplicate its success. MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE (1932) makes an interesting study because it’s based on story elements that writer/director Robert Florey intended for Universal’s screen adaptation of FRANKENSTEIN. The film is also notable as actor Bela Lugosi’s follow-up to his star-making role in DRACULA… which came only after he turned down the role of Frankenstein’s Monster. RUE MORGUE has absolutely nothing to do with Edgar Allan Poe’s short story of the same name, but – like most of the classic Universal monster movies – it does have mood to spare.

Lugosi fared even better in the same year’s WHITE ZOMBIE (1932), which capitalized on his exotic Dracula persona (there are an unholy number of prolonged closeups of Lugosi's eyes), while Boris Karloff rode Frankenstein’s coattails into the more prestigious THE MUMMY (1933), arguably the most beautiful of Universal’s monster movies. The opening scenes, set in Egypt, benefit greatly from the natural beauty of Red Rock Canyon in Kern County, California, and the rest of the film testifies to the natural talents of cinematographer Karl Freund. The only problem with THE MUMMY, as George A. Romero said to me during our interview for NIRWAB, is that “there’s no mummy in THE MUMMY!” In fact, you only see Karloff as the Mummy in the opening sequence. After that, he takes off the bandages and becomes Ardeth Bey – a lethargic variation on Lugosi’s Dracula. (Romero added: “It was Christopher Lee’s Mummy that really impressed me!”) For sheer atmosphere, the film that trumps all of Hollywood’s early monster movies is the German Expressionist film VAMPYR (1932), Carl Dreyer’s first sound film. It would be years before native American filmmakers learned how to capture the same dreamlike quality.

Arguably more innovative but certainly less atmospheric was a pair of films that director Michael Curtiz made for MGM. When I interviewed Larry Cohen, he raved about Curtiz’s work. Despite his enthusiasm for the director, however, he wasn’t particularly impressed with DR. X (1932) or MYSTERY OF THE WAX MUSEUM (1933). At the time, these films had the distinct appeal of being presented in color (actually three-strip Technicolor) and being set in modern-day America. DR. X plays like a 1930s American screwball comedy with some scares tacked on: THE FRONT PAGE in a rubber mask. MYSTERY OF THE WAX MUSEUM is a more compelling horror movie. In my opinion, it’s just as effective as its better-known remake HOUSE OF WAX (1953).

The most shamefully overlooked 1930s monster movie is Paramount’s ISLAND OF LOST SOULS (1932), a surprisingly gutsy adaptation of H.G. Wells’s “Island of Dr. Moreau.” It features a memorably sadistic performance by Charles Laughton (as the mad scientist who cross-breeds men and beasts) and a notable minor performance by Bela Lugosi, as one of Moreau’s man-beast creations who rebels against his creator. It’s a crime that this movie still isn’t available on DVD.

One of the best DVDs around for classic monster movie fans is disc three of MGM’s “Legends of Horror” Collection: a double feature of MAD LOVE (1935) and THE DEVIL DOLL (1936). MAD LOVE features Peter Lorre as an obsessive surgeon named Gogol. Bela Lugosi tried to top his eccentricities in the similarly-themed THE RAVEN (1935), but nobody plays crazy better than Peter Lorre. THE DEVIL DOLL is equally eccentric, but is perhaps more notable as director Tod Browning’s most sentimental film. Lionel Barrymore’s turn as an emotionally tortured scientist has all the pathos (though, admittedly, less of the perversity) of Browning’s early efforts with Lon Chaney.

SON OF FRANKENSTEIN (1939) is a capstone on the decade, reflecting a dramatic change in the genre: The extroverted horror film was no longer in vogue. SON OF FRANKENSTEIN is not nearly as morbid as its predecessors, and most of the thematic darkness is softened with humor. In fact, it would fit better on a double bill with Mel Brooks’s parody YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN (1974) than with James Whale’s films. This was Boris Karloff’s last turn as Frankenstein’s Monster (who, for some reason, has gone mute since BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN). Bela Lugosi plays another thankless role, as Ygor.

There are plenty of monster movies from this decade that I have yet to see. I admit that I’ve only watched about half of the Universal pictures that appeared in the “Shock” and “Son of Shock” TV packages in the 1950s. (About half of them aren’t available on DVD yet.) Several of the filmmakers that I interviewed for NIRWAB fondly remembered those films. Joe Dante said:

When I was a kid, I lived in the suburbs of New Jersey and there were no revival houses. Occasionally they would find a film like THE WIZARD OF OZ and run that on a matinee, but for the most part we were completely unaware of earlier pictures. That all changed when the Shock package was sold to TV. That was Universal movies from the 30s and 40s that had escaped our notice, because they were never available… The coming of the Shock package to television was a big deal because it was all over the country at the same time. And it coincided with the creation of Famous Monsters of Filmland, which was the publication that united a lot of kids who felt very alone in their obsession with these movies, and didn’t think there were other kids like them out there. When the magazine became available [we realized], “Hey there’s more kids like this. Like me.” It was the beginning of monster movie fandom. There had always been science fiction fandom, but it was very literary. But this was movie stuff. The one thing that Forry Ackerman did, I think, for a lot of people who grew up to go into the movie business was to sort of educate them to the fact that there was more than just going to the movies – more than just sitting there and going home. There were people out there who made these movies. There were people who starred in them. And there were trends and types and categories of films. It was really the beginning of critical thinking, I think, for a lot of kids.

Mick Garris remembers:

Channel 6 showed horror movies late at night, on a show called The Scary Show. And it was just a guy in a lousy rubber mask – not a memorable horror host at all – but he had the Universal package, so they would run the DRACULAs and the FRANKENSTEINs and THE WOLF MAN at 11:30 on Saturday night, and my mother would stay up and watch them with me. Most mothers at the time would discourage kids from reading comic books or watching monster movies, from drawing ghoulish things and the like… but my mother would say, “At least he’s reading, at least he’s drawing, at least he’s writing, at least he’s doing something creative,” and was very encouraging about it… She wasn’t a big horror fan but she would watch them and say, “You know, that was a good movie.” I remember after watching the 1931 DRACULA, she said, “That really holds up.” I don’t know that she’d say that today but back in the 60s she said, “That really holds up”… So I guess in part I have her to thank for my turn down the dark aisle.

Many of the “Shock” films that have been released on DVD over the past few years feature Boris Karloff. In 2006, Universal released the “Boris Karloff Collection” – which includes NIGHT KEY (1937) and THE MAD GHOUL (1943) – and the “Icons of Horror” collection, featuring THE BLACK ROOM (1935), THE MAN THEY COULD NOT HANG (1939), BEFORE I HANG (1940) and THE BOOGIE MAN WILL GET YOU (1942). The “Universal Horror Classic Movie Archive” box set, released in 2009, includes THE BLACK CAT (1934), MAN MADE MONSTER (1941), HORROR ISLAND (1941), NIGHT MONSTER (1942) and CAPTIVE WILD WOMAN (1943).

This Halloween, I decided to watch two non-Universal Karloff movies from the same time period, THE GHOUL (1933) and THE DEVIL COMMANDS (1941). Both were good finds. THE GHOUL is also relatively new to DVD… It was believed to be a lost film until a near-perfect-quality negative was found at the British Film Institute in the 1980s. MGM finally released the title on DVD in 2003, and it’s a beautiful sight.


The film stars Karloff as an Egyptologist who returns from the dead to stalk greedy heirs in a spooky old mansion. The cinematography is beautiful, and the dialogue surprisingly witty. Unfortunately, Karloff doesn’t get much screen time. Neither does Ernest Thesiger (best known as the wily Dr. Pretorious in BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN).


Obviously there are some missed opportunities, but it's still a great companion piece to THE MUMMY (1933) and THE OLD DARK HOUSE (1934)… or even George Romero’s NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (1967). Romero’s original title for NOTLD was “Anubis,” named after the Egyptian God of the Dead, and his concept of the living dead was very different from how it came to be interpreted by viewers: “I didn’t use vampires,” he told me, “because [Richard Matheson] had done that [in his novel I Am Legend]. I didn’t call them zombies because zombies were those boys in the Caribbean doing Lugosi’s wet work [in WHITE ZOMBIE]… I called them ghouls.”

The concept of the “living dead” is quite different in Columbia’s THE DEVIL COMMANDS (1941), directed by Edward Dmytryk. THE DEVIL COMMANDS is a Lovecraftian story that casts Karloff in the role of an obsessive scientist studying brain waves. After his wife is killed in a car accident, he goes mad, enlists the help of a cold-hearted psychic and starts experimenting on corpses. His goal is to use them as physical mediums for communication with his wife’s disembodied spirit.




Parallels to FRANKENSTEIN are numerous – right down to the Victorian warnings about “things mankind wasn’t mean to know” and an inevitable confrontation with an angry mob of provincial conservatives. Although it lacks the frisson to be a true horror classic, THE DEVIL COMMANDS is nevertheless an impressively literate horror film. Personally, I can’t help thinking of it as a forerunner to Tom McLoughlin’s ONE DARK NIGHT (1981), which delves deep into the pseudo-science of biofeedback beyond the grave. My only complaint: Where the hell is the devil in THE DEVIL COMMANDS?

Happy haunting!

Halloween in Vegas

You know that feeling you used to get as a kid when the circus or the traveling carnival left town? All of the excitement and energy that had briefly transformed the normal into the surreal was suddenly gone, and all that remained was an empty field of memories. That’s how I felt leaving Vegas last night, after Fangoria’s 1st TRINITY OF TERRORS. I don’t mean to suggest that Vegas is suddenly an empty field… In Vegas, after all, every night is Halloween. But there was something magical about seeing a group of guys dressed up as Alex and his droogies, wandering through a casino where Malcolm McDowell was signing autographs upstairs… and seeing zombies playing the slot machines, blissfully unaware of George Romero’s presence a few feet behind them.

This event, masterminded by Renaissance man Scott Licina, featured the longest list of horror genre icons at any convention I’m aware of. While it lacked the celebrity/fan intimacy of a smaller convention, it was undeniably thrilling to spend Halloween among friends and freaks at the lavish Palms Resort & Casino, where horror stars competed for attention with Paul Oakenfold, the Playboy Club, and of course the gambling tables. For me, the highlights were a lively Q&A session with Tom Atkins and Adrienne Barbeau, a stand-up routine by the hilariously demented John Waters, a tribute to Roger Corman (inventor of the high-concept genre film), Ashley Laurence (always), and a pre-release screening of George Romero’s new film SURVIVAL OF THE DEAD! There was also a screening of a little documentary called NIGHTMARES IN RED WHITE AND BLUE, which appeared to be well received. (Next stop: Mar del Plata)

SURVIVAL OF THE DEAD got off to a very rocky start. The Halloween midnight screening, which would have played to a packed theater, was canceled shortly before 1am. Romero himself introduced the movie, and then the folks at Brenden Theaters spent the next hour trying to replace a light bulb in the projector. At 12:45AM, they announced to a very angry audience that they wouldn’t be able to show the film until the following afternoon. A much smaller audience gathered in a much smaller theater on Sunday. Despite this disappointing setup, I was pleasantly surprised by the film – which seems to me like a heartfelt tribute to directors John Ford and Howard Hawks.

SURVIVAL is to last year’s DIARY OF THE DEAD what DAWN was to NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD. The second in a rebooted franchise, it picks up three weeks after the crisis and follows a minor character from the previous film into the new world. I got a little bit worried when the film began with voiceover narration, because I feel that the preachy narration was the weakest part of DIARY, often at odds (tonally) with the film’s gleefully anarchic violence. Thankfully, the VO in SURVIVAL doesn’t last. Romero quickly drops us into a world gone mad, and turns over the reigns to a group of quirky, ruthless, and ultimately very likable characters. The type of characters we met in DIARY OF THE DEAD – bratty college students with no survival instincts – have presumably been killed off by now, leaving the post-apocalyptic world to modern-day cowboys.

“Lousy times make lousy people,” one character says, but the fact that everyone in this film (even the youngest character, who exists mainly to lament the death of advanced technology) is a survivor makes them much easier to empathize with. Excellent performances by a cast of relative unknowns don’t hurt either. In a Q&A session, the director said that he thought this was the best cast he’d worked with in years, and I have to agree. There are the usual moments of comic book violence, but I was surprised by just how naturalistic much of the film was. It’s also worth noting that, for all of the in-fighting between the characters, everyone seems to have their own personal code of conduct and honor, which makes the film seem more sentimental than satirical, more genuinely insightful than preachy… and makes SURVIVAL OF THE DEAD, in my opinion, Romero’s best movie since 1985. Here’s to hoping that it gets good distribution… and that the employees of Brenden Theaters learn how to change a light bulb. If not, they certainly won't last long against the undead.

This guy freaked me out...

"Uncle George" & Malcolm McDowell -- manager Chris Roe (far right) says he'd like to put these two guys together in a film. I don't think anyone would argue with that.

Meg Foster (who could forget those eyes from THEY LIVE?), Caroline Williams (lovable lady of THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE PART 2), and scream queen Dee Wallace (THE HILLS HAVE EYES, THE HOWLING, CUJO). Meg and Caroline starred together in STEPFATHER II, recently released on DVD.

Me with Adrienne Barbeau & Tom Atkins, who both starred in THE FOG, ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK, CREEPSHOW and TWO EVIL EYES... but have never had a scene together. (Nor slept together, Atkins divulged in their Q&A.)

The inimitable John Waters performs his one-man show, "This Filthy World," and poses the questions that matter: "Wouldn't you rather have your child be a drug dealer than a drug addict?"

Roger Corman receives Fangoria's Lifetime Achievement Award from Fango editor Tony Timpone - a precursor to the Lifetime Achievement Oscar that Corman is due to receive later this year!

Trinity organizer Scott Licina & artist/actress Ashley Laurence, star of HELLRAISER, LIGHTNING BUG, and Robert Kurtzman's upcoming film BUMP (based on the Fangoria comic edited by Licina)

The Alchemy of Words

A few years ago, in my first book, I made a somewhat provocative comparison between a widely-acknowledged masterpiece of modern poetry and a low-budget horror movie: “NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD is an indictment of modern life in America. It conveys the anxieties of life in a time of theological and political uncertainty, suggesting that we as a nation are overwhelmed by faceless, irrational and blindly destructive forces, and are incapable of creating a united front to drive them back. T.S. Eliot conveyed the same mind-consuming anxieties for Europeans at the dawn of the Industrial Age. The Waste Land (published in 1919), was the poet’s desperate attempt to suture centuries worth of religious and philosophical thoughts into a coherent view of a world worth living in.”

Let me be the first to say that I was wrong. The Waste Land was not published in 1919. While sections of the poem were written as early as 1914, it was not published until October 1922. Furthermore, although the poem does explore the dehumanizing and dispiriting effects of industrialized life, 1922 was hardly the “dawn” of the Industrial Age in Europe. Eliot was walking on heavily-trodden ground, following in the footsteps of poets like William Blake (1757 – 1827) and William Wordsworth (1770 – 1850). Suffice it to say that when I wrote my first book, I was more preoccupied with NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD than with The Waste Land.

Fast forward a few years, to the publication of my second book – The Making of T.S. Eliot: A Study of the Literary Influences. This time, I’ve done my homework on The Waste Land… and I maintain that the comparison between Eliot and director George A. Romero is valid. It even helps to explain how I went from writing a book about horror movies to writing a book about modern poetry. As a kid, I was drawn to horror movies because they explored and thereby helped me to cope with my deepest fears – fears of being abnormal, fears of adult sexuality, fears of death, and an overarching fear that life was random and ultimately without meaning. In a nutshell, that’s what Eliot’s poetry is about: coming to terms with the world you live in.

Many academics have explored Eliot’s obsessions and, in recent years, a few academics have come out of the woodwork to champion Romero. In his book The Gospel of the Living Dead, theologian Kim Paffenroth proposes that Romero’s Dead movies help to illustrate the Christian concept of original sin, by showing us a world in desperate need of God’s grace. That may not have been Romero’s intention, but it’s an interesting (and, I think, completely valid) reading. Paffenroth says, “Christians would have to admit that, although they must disagree with Romero’s denial of a cure, he has the diagnosis of sin more right than many modern thinkers and artists, and has compellingly presented it in all its power and horror.”

T.S. Eliot offers a similar perspective on one of his formative influences, Charles Baudelaire – a French poet who was inspired, like Eliot himself, by America’s first master of horror, Edgar Allan Poe. Eliot says, “Baudelaire perceived that what really matters is Sin and Redemption. It is proof of his honesty that he went as far as he could honestly go and no further […] the possibility of damnation is so immense a relief in a world of electoral reform, plebiscites, sex reform and dress reform, that damnation itself is an immediate form of salvation – of salvation from the recent ennui of modern life, because it at least gives some significance to the living.” Romero too shows us the ennui of modern life. His listless zombies are comparable to the tormented souls in Dante’s Inferno, a literary allusion that Eliot used in The Waste Land to illustrate his own horror: “I had not thought that death had undone so many.” The emotion is the same: Pity on the verge of despair, desperation in need of a cure.

The major theme running through the careers of both Eliot and Romero is longing for a prelapsarian world. (Prelapsarian is a great word that one of my college professors loved to use, meaning Edenic or “before The Fall.”) The Waste Land and NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD are the turning points in their searches. Both texts propose that total annihilation is necessary (perhaps unavoidable) in the progress toward a new beginning. Each man has his own ideas about what that new beginning should be. Eliot, a Romantic-turned-Classicist, became a champion of traditional Christianity. Romero, a somewhat frustrated member of the peace/love generation, continues to believe in the transforming power of social liberalism. Despite their ideological differences, both men are voices in the wilderness crying out for peace, love and the necessity of magic and mystery in everyday life.

I’d argue that the same perspective applies to Stephen King, whose (reputedly morbid but generally optimistic) fiction led me to Eliot when I was in high school. I think he would agree with Eliot that horror is the first stage in a lifelong process: “the beginning of wisdom is fear.” We all start in the darkness. Eliot says that the artist must be honest. If he can’t see beyond the darkness in his life, he can’t get beyond the darkness in his work. But the greatest artists, he says, are those whose perspective deepens and grows over time, offering a more balanced view of life.

The Making of T.S. Eliot explores Eliot’s journey out of the darkness. I set out wanting to understand if and how he actually managed to get from “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” (a poem that seemed to embody the most haunting thoughts, impulses and anxieties I could imagine as a teenager) to a whole-hearted embrace of Christianity. The book follows the chronology of the young poet’s life, factoring each successive influence (literary and biographical) into the whole that finally emerged in his work, through a process that I like to think of as "the alchemy of words." It was a daunting project, but I’m very proud of the results and I hope it will lead a few new readers to Eliot.

If I haven’t piqued your interest yet, let me point to a few old blog posts that I’ve written on Eliot. I’m also posting the table of contents for the book, to give a sense of the variety of works that Eliot (and I, by extension) was trying to absorb and assimilate…

DJ Shadow and T.S. Eliot
T.S. Eliot and the Modern American College
T.S. Eliot and Religious Literacy in America
A review of a novel about the T.S. Eliot / Emily Hale letters
The City of Dreadful Joy - my homage to The Waste Land

The Making of T.S. Eliot - Table of Contents

Part 1 – A Point of Departure (1905 – 1910)
Childhood
E.A. Poe & Edward Fitzgerald: Shadowy Sounds from Visionary Wings
Fin de siecle
W.B. Yeats & Arthur Symons: Dance on Deathless Feet
Charles Baudelaire: Something New
Arthur Rimbaud & Paul Verlaine: Something Sacred
Jules Laforgue: An Art of the Nerves
Inventions

Part 2 – A Passion for Wholeness (1910 – 1911)
The Teachings of Irving Babbitt
The Soul of Homer
The Birth of Tragedy
The Epistemology of Plato
The Metaphysics of Aristotle
The Life of Reason
The Metamorphoses of the Roman Empire
The Birth of Christianity
The Confessions of St. Augustine
The Inferno of Dante
The Legend of Shakespeare
Eliot and Shakespeare, Hamlet and His Problems
Interlude in Paris
Henri Bergson: Creative Evolution
Walt Whitman: Mosaic
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Part 3 – Appearance and Reality (1911 – 1915)
Prelude
The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad
The Bhagavad Gita
The Light of Asia
Buddhism, Christianity and the Fire Sermon
Josiah Royce: The Problem of Christianity
Mysticism
The Burnt Dancer
Bertrand Russell: Mysticism and Logic
First Debate between Body and Soul
F.H. Bradley: Notes towards the Absolute
Eliot, Bradley & Symbolism
T.E. Hulme: Castles in the Air
The Death of Saint Narcissus

Part 4 – The Beginning of Wisdom (1915 – 1920)
Vivienne
The Education of Henry Adams
Matthew Arnold: The Function of Criticism
Four Jacobean Dramatists
Thomas Middleton: A Game of Chess
John Webster: The Skull beneath the Skin
Saving Tom
Saving Sweeney
John Donne: Whispers of Immortality
William Wordsworth: Intimations of Immortality
Samuel Taylor Coleridge: The Secondary Imagination
Supernatural Horror in Shelley & Browning
William Blake: The Religion of Art
Lines for an Old Man
The Alchemy of Words
Breakdown

Part 5 – Beyond Good and Evil (1920 – 1921)
The Decline of the West
Goethe: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future
Friedrich Nietzsche: Beyond Good and Evil
Zarathustra: Nietzsche as Symbolist Poet
Fyodor Dostoevsky: In Sight of Chaos
Herman Hesse: The Journey to the East
Carl Jung & James George Frazer: Symbols of Transformation
The Mythical Method
Arthurian Legend
From Ritual to Romance
Breakthrough
The Waste Land: The Burial of the Dead (Part I)
The Waste Land: The Burial of the Dead (Part II)
The Waste Land: A Game of Chess / In the Cage
The Waste Land: The Fire Sermon
The Waste Land: Death by Water
The Waste Land: What the Thunder Said (Part I)
The Waste Land: What the Thunder Said (Part II)

Part 6 – Between Dying and Birth (1922 – 1930)
Purgatory
Dante II: The New Love
The Varieties of Metaphysical Poetry
Lancelot Andrewes
Death’s Other Kingdom
Joseph Conrad: Heart of Darkness
Paul Valéry: Between the Motion and the Act
Poetry and Belief
Belief and Politics
The Wine of the Puritans
Ralph Waldo Emerson: The Web of God
The Hawthorne Aspect of Henry James
Ash Wednesday & the Ariel Poems: A Long Journey
Ash Wednesday & the Ariel Poems: The Turning Point
Ash Wednesday & the Ariel Poems: After the Turning
Ash Wednesday & the Ariel Poems: Life in Flux