Romero's Zombie Films

[CT]

As seems to be the consensus, I enjoy them all but voted for Dawn as the best.

[Nobody]

I can't vote. To hard. lol

[jasette1970]

I voted for Night of The Living Dead. It's like you seen one, you've seen them all sort of thing.

[Nobody]

Not really. They all have a different setting and a different presentation. NOLD deals more with character conflicts, while Dawn there isn't as much as that and its more of an action movie, Day went back to character conflict with tons of dialgogue, and Land was like a blend of all three.

[Jen]

I feel they all have a fairly unquie, individual feel to them except for Land of the Dead, which was fun but didn't seem to have much else going for it. I liked it, but if I had went into it with my expectations high, I would have been disappointed. Day of the Dead WAS mildly disappointing to me. Again, a fun film, and there really was a lot more to it than Land of the Dead, but it didn't have the impact of the first two.

So I choose Night of the Living Dead. Dawn of the Dead is wicked smart, but nothing in Dawn of the Dead affected me as much as the ending to NOTLD did. An emotionally disturbing ending, not too many movies have bothered me so quite so much.

[Nobody]

Yea all are unique. I actually feel Day of the Dead is one of the best in the series. I still can't choose though. lol

[Jen]

I liked it, and would probably appreciate it more if I hadn't LOVED the first two so much but there was something that felt off about it. Still a damn decent zombie film, don't get me wrong, just didn't grab me like the first two.
Its not an easy choice....lol.

[Nobody]

Yea.

[HNT]

As I said earlier, Dawn is my fave. I agree with Jen, though, taht the ending to Night might just be the best single moment in any of the films. It was just so nihilistic and politically prescient in 1968. I also love Day. It is a great film without question, but somehow just doesn't feel quite as tightly held together as the first two. I think that had Romero been able to make Day as he originally envisioned it, without the budgetary nightmares that he was saddled with, it would have been just as great as the other two. In it's current form, though, it is just a tad below Night and Dawn. Incidentally, if you ever get the chance to read Romero's ortiginal script for Day you should. It would have been wild if he could have made the film that way

[Jen]

I suppose that is why I am such a fan of the NOTLD and Dawn of the Dead. They both actually had something to say about society and they both did it in a very smart way. Romero set a dangerous precedent there...LOL....because even though I don't expect all films to have such important themes or messages ( I watch a lot of crap, I like a lot of crap and I am not ashamed to admit it), I do typically expect more from a Romero film. Which is completely unfair....I know it. lol

[GL]

That's also a big reason why I don't place Dawn and Night all that high on my favorite zombie films, because of the hammering of the social commentary. I don't mind a little bit here and there, but the fact that the film's stop at places just to have that in the film. That takes me right out of the film, as I'm sitting there, enjoying a movie and I then have to wait for this social commentary scene to be done and get out of the way for me to get back into the film. That creates a real start-stop rhythym to the film and it becomes distracting after a while. It makes it harder to view the film afterwards because there's a distracting problem with the film rather than another problem (like bad dubbing, dialog, weak action, etc.) with some other film.

Don't get this wrong, though, I like the films and am quite fond of them, but that problem does get to me after a while.

[Canetoad]

It is the social commentary that sets these films apart - each own in its own way a socio-political allegory for the era in which they were made. And in none of them did I find the messages overly blunt or contrived - rather the whle film acted as a metaphor for the time.

Even with LOTD you could argue the whole premise (a cloistered, powerful and corrupt elite exploiting the populace to wage war on a faceless horde of enemies - while creating a climate of fear and xenophobia) is a pretty powerful statement.

[Jen]

I don't believe the films are heay handed in the least, I was never distracted by it. It never seemed so obvious to me, not while I was watching the film, but more so after I watched the film, and thought back through it. I totally got lost in the movies while I watching them, and never once thought (at least not during the first few viewings) what is he trying to say here? It just seemed to me like a natural part of the story he was trying to tell. It never seemed forced or pushy or preachy, in my opinion.

[GL]

I just have a problem getting through them because of the commentary. I don't mind it, but I don't like being hit over the head with it.

[HNT]

I must also jump in to the defense of social commentar in romero's films. that is precisely why I love them so much. I am as big a fan of B-movie cheese as anyone, but the commentary offered by Romero (in most of his films, but especialy the Dead films) is just fantastic. Lets face it. Zombies in and of hemselves are not the most exciting film villains. They are not smart, they tend to be fairly easy to kill, and it generally takes a pretty large suspension of disbelief on m part to take them at all seriously. It is the alegorical elements of Romero's films that mkes it all worth while to me. His assesment of the inequities of race and class in America never felt terribly heavy handed to me. In fact, I always felt that he dealt with them about as effectively as they ever have been addressed in he traditionally less respected horror genre. Romero's films carry as much weight with me at that level as many more "serious" dramatic films