The Blind Dead at the drive-in

For less than fifteen quid, I picked up Anchor Bay’s R2 box set, The Blind Dead Collection, which covers Amando de Ossorio’s 4-film series made in Spain in the early 70s. These must have been inspired initially by the success of Night of the Living Dead, and are not without their attractions: the blurb claims ‘a relentless onslaught of creepy atmosphere, shocking violence, forbidden sexuality, and the still-chilling icons of Euro Horror: the eyeless undead who hunt by sound in their quest for human flesh’. For once the blurb isn’t far off, though it fails to mention the terrible acting, dubbing and increasingly stupid plotting.

Anyway, the titular bad guys are heretic Knights Templar, who seem to get an overall bad deal in movies. The idea that you can keep quiet and avoid them is initially neat but becomes more comic with overuse.

Tomb Of The Blind Dead (1971) is the first and works very well in parts, though I’m not sure about zombies riding horses and trains. The confusingly-titled Return Of The Evil Dead (1973) starts to smell a bit like a cash-in, and the suspicion is confirmed in number 3, imaginatively titled Blind Dead 3 (1974). By this time, de Ossorio is tiring of the gore and adds a load of naked ‘models’ to the cast as well as turning the Blind Dead into seafaring zombies (maybe this would be a good idea if you did it as a comedy…) Blind Dead 4 (1975) was actually titled Night Of The Seagulls when I first saw it, and is for completists only. De Ossorio’s talent for creepiness is still apparent but he doesn’t seem bothered by plot, continuity or anything else you might take for granted.

The box set contains a fifth disk with documentaries about and by de Ossorio. The whole thing is very interesting if viewed in a historical context (Spanish film-makers seemed to go a bit nuts after Franco died, shovelling on the sex and violence for no good reason except they had it saved up; see also Josef Grau’s bizarre Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue from 1974) and if you’ve got a strong stomach and an endless supply of alcohol then this is highly recommended at the price.

The American R1 box set is a lot fancier, being coffin-shaped, and has a few extra uncut seconds but costs four times as much.

Mild Peril Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars

Mild Peril - movie reviews and more

Patrick O'Flynn (Kenneth Welsh) in Survival of the Dead

With very little fanfare, George Romero‘s Survival of the Dead has arrived on UK DVD and BluRay. I assume the low-key release is down to the generally indifferent welcome for his last zombie movie, Diary of the Dead. As one of those disappointed with the last entry, I approached Survival warily.

Well, the good news is that it achieves its objectives a whole lot better than Diary. The hand-held gimmick is gone, and Romero gets a chance to show once more his compositional talent, with lots of images based on western iconography. The bad news is that it still doesn’t rank with the first four in the series.

The plot involves the National Guard deserter Sarge Crockett (well played by Alan Van Sprang), first seen in Diary, as he travels to an island off the coast of Delaware with his colleagues to try and find a safe refuge. Unfortunately he finds Plum Island’s humans split into two factions:  the O’Flynns determined to finish off the dead once and for all, and the Muldoons  who keep  their deceased relatives chained up in case a cure is found. Right away, you’ll have spotted the  big flaw in the movie:  anybody who’s spent any time thinking about it would side with the O’Flynns. However Romero presents the two arguments as equally (in)valid, as his Big Metaphor this time involves people fighting for the sake of it. He does have the sense to make Patrick O’Flynn a more lovable character than his opponent, helped immensely by Kenneth Welsh, who stays just the right side of parody. In the other corner, Richard Fitzpatrick plays Seamus Muldoon as a grim-faced inflexible tyrant, and despite his best efforts he can’t make his character’s stance believable.

As always, the zombies are not the problem in Romero’s universe, but Survival goes badly wrong in providing the factions with credible reasons for fighting.  On the odd occasion it seems that  the Irish characters are meant to allude to the ‘Troubles’ but if so, it’s a serious and lazy misjudgement on Romero’s part, and is very surprising from the man who gave us carefully considered analyses of society in his first few zombie movies.

Another logical flaw – having laid down the ‘rules’ for the genre so well, Romero gives us the spectacle of zombies feeding on animals. It wouldn’t be so bad if the new movies were just irrelevant, but once he starts to contradict his own rules, Romero runs the risk of devaluing the earlier movies.

So, it’s a complete disaster, right? No, not in the way that Diary had me holding my head. It looks pretty good, the acting is solid, and there’s the odd logistical set-piece to please the fans. The score is OK when it sticks to action, but too often lapses into Fred Quimby-style comedy emphasis. On several occasions, a zombie will loom surprisingly into the frame accompanied by a musical sting, only to be dispatched in a wacky way by a handy implement. For trained soldiers, the central characters don’t half leave a lot of loose ends around waiting to bite them.

Survival of the Dead contains enough ideas to give you hope that Romero has it in him to produce another classic, but enough jarring moments to make you wish he’d go back to thinking about these things for a decade before filming them.

Finally, this is the first Romero DVD release I can recall which came without tons of extras. In fact, there’s nothing, unless you count chapter stops and a menu screen.

Mild Peril Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

Mild Peril - movie reviews and more

Simon Pegg stars as the eponymous hero, Nick Frost plays his slobbish friend and George Romero loves this movie so much that he’s just filmed Pegg and Wright in a cameo in Land of the Dead.

So anything I might say is redundant. Get it and you’ll enjoy it.

Mild Peril Rating: 3.7 out of 5 stars

Mild Peril - movie reviews and more

There’s a great scene with deadly laserbeams, and the production values are generally high but don’t stretch to convincing monsters or any gore, and the zombies fall over with a slight tap to the temples. The makers even have the nerve to quote extensively from George’s movies, but that only shows this movie up as a pale imitation of the real thing.

After 90 minutes of our heroine running around in a short skirt and sharp cheekbones, it occurred to me that this is more or less a Kylie video with added zombies. Which probably makes it sound better than it is. The DVD commentary is horrible too.

Mild Peril Rating: 1.5 out of 5 stars

Mild Peril - movie reviews and more

Leguizamo, Baker and Joy

There’s only one movie that you’ve been waiting for if you’re in the know: George Romero’s 4th in his zombie trilogy, Land of the Dead. It was rushed out to a summer deadline when Doom fell behind schedule, but now the director’s cut is out on R1 DVD, a few minutes longer than the cinema release. There’s only one significant added scene, and the rest of the changes consist mainly of added gore effects.

The whole movie is still too short and too glossy (particularly in comparison to the previous entries in the series), while not quite upbeat enough to appeal to those who liked the Dawn of the Dead remake for example, but for fans of smart and serious horror movies, this is your ideal Christmas present. The DVD extras are great but too short (‘home movies’ by stars John Leguizamo and Simon Pegg/Edgar Wright are very funny) and there’s a commentary by George which still leaves room for another special edition once all the fuss has settled down.

Mild Peril Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Mild Peril - movie reviews and more