Behind the Couch

As the director of Night of the Living Dead (1968), George Romero will be remembered as one of the major pioneers of the modern horror film. A truly groundbreaking work, it was released just eight years after Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960), and like that film,  Night of the Living Dead similarly suggested that monsters can live right next door to us. Indeed, Romero took this notion one step further by suggesting that it is us who are the monsters. Several sequels followed, all of which provided socio-political commentary against the backdrop of a world where the dead return to life and consume the living, an examination of the human condition, and how ordinary people faced with extraordinary, unprecedented events struggle to survive. The horror in these films stems from the things people do to themselves and each other when the world as we know it comes shuddering to an end and humanity fragments and literally eats itself. Following on from Romero's previous Dead film, the am...

2014 Dir. Alexandre O. Philippe Depending on your opinion, Danny Boyle either has a lot to answer for, or has not been given nearly enough credit for the popularity of zombie themed entertainment throughout the last decade. 28 Days Later arguably kick-started the current interest in zombie movies, and while it isn’t strictly speaking a 'zombie' film, Boyle took a fairly typical zombie movie template and fashioned a dark and breathlessly taut film which poked at the same slagheap of ideas and themes (infection, social collapse, global catastrophe) as George Romero’s earlier flesh-ripping classics. Shaun of the Dead quickly followed, and its success convinced studio honchos that zombies were hot again. This prompted them to, for once, throw money at George Romero, who is largely responsible for the overriding popular perception of zombies today anyway, to help him make Land of the Dead , a belated follow-up to his ‘Dead trilogy’. In the few years since then, zombies hav...

...The Dead Will Deafen You! Last night Belfast’s Waterfront Hall played host to a special screening of George A. Romero’s satirical zombie classic, Dawn of the Dead . The screening was part of the Belfast Film Festival and featured a live score performed by none other than Claudio Simonetti’s Goblin. Dawn of the Dead tells of a group of people caught up in an ever-increasing pandemic of the dead returning to life and devouring the living. Seeking refuge in a shopping mall, they attempt to fortify the place while they await rescue. Events take a turn for the worse however, when their sanctuary is pillaged by malevolent humans and the group soon realise they have more to worry about then the marauding zombies outside… Describing the experience of seeing Claudio Simonetti and his band perform the score for Dario Argento’s Suspiria live last year as 'sensory overload', doesn’t do it justice. Nothing can prepare you for the experience of hearing the band perform live, an...

As some of you may know, Aaron over at The Death Rattle has been busy all week, posting about the work of George Romero. Romero’s work is generally considered to be groundbreaking, genre-redefining stuff; he’s often credited with reinventing modern horror cinema with his morbidly bleak masterpiece Night of the Living Dead . Throughout the years he is a filmmaker who has consistently proved he has a unique and singular vision, effectively realised with each cinematic offering. So head over to The Death Rattle to check out Aaron’s guide to Romero’s Top 13 movies, a Poll of the Dead and various guest posts from the likes of B-Movie Becky from The Horror Effect , Carl Manes from I Like Horror Movies , and Richard of Doomed Moviethon . There’s also a little something on Romero’s mold-breaking vampire tale Martin , by me. But don’t let that put you off.

1977 Dir. George Romero Insecure teenager Martin believes he is actually an 84-year-old vampire and that he must drink the blood of humans to remain alive. His belief is reinforced by his elderly cousin, Cuda, with whom he is sent to live. Cuda is convinced vampirism is part of a family curse. Driven by his insatiable blood lust, the frustrated and confused teen  forces himself to kill and feed, drugging his victims to reduce their suffering before opening their veins with a razor blade. However, his inhuman desires are almost overcome when he begins an affair and he starts to question his vampirism… Criminally undervalued by audiences and critics at the time of its release, Martin is now generally accepted to be among Romero's finest work to date; it’s certainly the director’s personal favourite of his own movies. With Martin , Romero slyly subverted the conventions of the vampire myth and added a truly fresh angle to the vampire movie genre; in its wake came films such as ...

1985 Dir. George Romero In the wake of the zombie apocalypse, only small pockets of humans survive. A small group of scientists and soldiers are holed up in an underground missile silo. As the scientists experiment on forcibly captured zombie specimens to try and find a way to control them, the soldiers become increasingly impatient with the lack of results and are eager to wage an all-out war on the undead. Soon, the tension between the two camps erupts into a violent situation that is only overshadowed by the vicious zombie slaughter that surrounds them. When George Romero wrote the original treatment for Day of the Dead , he intended it to be on a much grander scale, a ‘Raiders of the Living Dead’, if you will. Or as Romero once described it – ‘the Gone with the Wind of zombie movies’. Allegedly he and Dario Argento had planned to team up again to helm the project, however the funding from European investors fell through and Argento regrettably had to pull out of the project,...