MonsterGirl’s 150 Days of Classic Horror #108 Night of the Living Dead 1968 & Dawn of the Dead 1978

NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD 1968

When Panic Blossomed and the Dead Remembered Us: Visceral Nightmares and the Birth of the Flesh-Eating Apocalypse in Romero’s Living Dead

I’ll never forget the first time I saw Night of the Living Dead—mainly because I spent half the movie peeking through my fingers, clutching my Milk Duds in one hand and my dignity in the other. My older brother, ever the sadist (or maybe just a budding cinephile, no, it was typical older brother mischief), and his pal, decided I was finally old enough to be initiated into the world of raw horror! Not just late night Chiller Theater, or Universal horrors, or afternoon 50s sci-fi giant rubber bugs and evil aliens horror, and he dragged me to the theater with his equally mischievous pal.

There I was, wedged between them, squirming in my seat while the smell of popcorn and impending doom I hadn’t even conceived existed yet, filled the air. Every time I tried to shield my eyes, my brother’s hand would clamp over mine, prying my fingers apart.

I’d never seen anything like it. When that first ghoul came lumbering toward Barbra and Johnny in the graveyard, right after she’d laid down the flowers, I thought I’d walked in late and missed an entire setup, when it jumped to Johnny’s “They’re coming to get you, Barbraaa!” I thought it was supposed to be a joke, but I didn’t get the irony or the gravity—I was too busy trying not to lose my Pepsi and my composure. Suddenly, the terror was so real, so relentless, that I was convinced I’d never sleep again. Honestly, I was more worried about surviving the next ninety minutes than surviving the zombie apocalypse. That night in the theater, I realized Night of the Living Dead was unlike any monster movie I’d ever seen. It terrified me to the core, rewired my idea of what horror could be, and left me with a lingering suspicion that the real monsters might be sitting right next to me, elbowing me to keep my eyes open. There’s so much to unpack in this film—its social commentary, its revolutionary gore, and all the gory details in all their gory detail- even in black-and white— practically begs for a full-blown autopsy. So stay tuned, drive-in friends, because I’m about to dig deep into Romero’s masterpiece, and I promise not to flinch… much.

There’s a certain mad genius to George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead—a film that didn’t just birth a new kind of monster, but detonated a cultural bomb whose shockwaves still rattle the bones of horror cinema. Romero, a Pittsburgh native cutting his teeth on commercials and the occasional Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood segment, wasn’t the obvious candidate to reinvent the genre. But maybe that’s exactly why he did. Tired of the rubber masks and Gothic castles of old, Romero and his ragtag team at The Latent Image originally wanted to make something raw, immediate, and, above all, terrifyingly real. A more traditional zombie story evolving from Romero’s earlier short film Night of the Flesh Eaters but budget constraints and a healthy dose of creative desperation led Romero and co-writer John Russo to strip their story down to the marrow: flesh-eating ghouls, a farmhouse under siege, and the end of the world as we know it. The Zombies were here! And we became meat!

Romero’s inspiration came partly from Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend, but where Matheson’s vampires haunted a post-apocalyptic wasteland, Romero wanted to show the world’s collapse in real time, minute by nerve-shredding minute. Matheson’s story would be adapted to the screen as Vincent Price’s visual poetry, The Last Man on Earth 1964, directed by Ubaldo Ragona and Sidney Salkow, which was a meditation on isolation, mortality, and existential despair. It would later be visualized in 1971 as The Omega Man, directed by Boris Sagal and starring Charlton Heston, Anthony Zerbe, and Rosalind Cash.

With a shoestring budget and a Pittsburgh crew, Romero stripped the genre of its Gothic trappings and set his horror in the everyday: a rural farmhouse, a newsreel-black-and-white palette, and a cast of ordinary people whose terror felt uncomfortably real. Romero’s zombies were something new—relentless, cannibalistic, and devoid of any master, serving as a chilling mirror to the living.

He shot the film in and around Pittsburgh, using the condemned farmhouse as the main set—a place so decrepit that the crew sometimes slept there, lacking running water and proper amenities, they bathed in a nearby creek. The black-and-white 35mm film wasn’t an artistic flourish but a necessity. Yet, it gave the movie a newsreel immediacy, as if the apocalypse were unfolding on the evening broadcast. Romero’s guerrilla style—handheld shots in moments of chaos, slow pans for creeping dread, and static frames that felt like visual traps—turned every budgetary limitation into a creative advantage. The lighting is pure chiaroscuro, shadows looming as large as the ghouls themselves, and the grainy texture only heightens the sense of documentary realism.

The sound design is equally unvarnished: instead of a swelling orchestral score, Romero leans on ambient noise, radio static, and the primal thud of drumbeats. The effect is uncomfortably intimate, as if you’re barricaded in that farmhouse with those doomed characters, hearing every groan, every shuffling footstep, every splinter of wood as the dead close in. Trapped in that farmhouse, panic hit me in a visceral wave—my chest tight, breath shallow, every sound from outside like a fist pounding on my nerves. It was a raw, animal fear I’d never felt before, the kind that made my skin prickle and my instincts scream that there was nowhere safe, not even inside my own shaking body in the safety of the musty theater’s seat.

Makeup, handled by Marilyn Eastman and Karl Hardman (who also act in the film), is a masterclass in DIY horror: sunken eyes, mortician’s wax, and enough chocolate syrup to make Bosco a silent partner in the production. The zombies—never called that in the film, only “ghouls”—move with a lurching, sideways menace, their faces as twisted and gnarled as the tree roots.  They bore the open petals of rot, wounds blossoming in the silence of death, as they stumbled past. For god’s sake, the one picking the thousand-legger off the tree and eating it is enough to make me wretch.

The cast, largely unknowns and locals, bring a rawness that only adds to the sense of escalating panic. Duane Jones, as Ben, contributed significantly to developing his character and rewrote much of his own dialogue, transforming the intended rougher, more blue-collar truck driver. Jones brought a calm, intelligent, and authoritative presence to the role. From a rough truck driver into a resourceful survivor—the first Black protagonist in American horror, and a casting choice that would become freighted with social and political meaning.

The casting of Duane Jones in the lead role of a horror film- a Black actor- as the level-headed, capable protagonist was groundbreaking. Romero insisted his casting was all about talent, not politics, but in 1968 America, Ben’s fate could not help but echo the country’s violent racial history. A Black man being gunned down by a white posse couldn’t help but resonate. The film’s nihilism—its sense that the real horror is not the monsters outside, but the divisions, paranoia, and violence within—mirrored a country reeling from assassinations, Cold War paranoia, distrust of American institutions, civil unrest, and the Vietnam War.

The film’s final, gut-wrenching moments—Ben surviving the night only to be shot and killed and thrown onto a pyre—evoke images of lynching and the brutal realities of race relations in the U.S.. The stark, documentary-like stills that close the film are eerily reminiscent of civil rights-era photographs, confronting viewers with the inescapable truth of America’s inequalities.

Judith O’Dea’s Barbra, all wide-eyed terror and catatonia, is the audience’s conduit into the nightmare. Karl Hardman and Marilyn Eastman as the bickering Coopers, Keith Wayne and Judith Ridley as doomed young lovers, and Kyra Schon as the sickly, soon-to-be-ghoul Karen—all of them feel like real people, not movie archetypes, which makes their fates that much more wrenching.

The story opens with Barbra and her brother Johnny bickering their way through a cemetery visit—Johnny teasing her with a sing-song:

Johnny: “They’re coming to get you, Barbra!”

Barbra: “Stop it! You’re ignorant!”

Johnny: “They’re coming for you, Barbra! Look, there comes one of them now!”

– right before he’s promptly attacked and killed by the first ghoul, Barbra flees, crashing her car and stumbling into a seemingly abandoned farmhouse.

Enter Ben, who takes charge with a tire iron and a plan: board up the windows, keep the walking dead out, and try not to lose your mind.

The face at the top of the stairs in Night of the Living Dead wasn’t just a face; it was the mask of death itself, peering down with the cold indifference of the grave. For a moment, I was certain my heart had forgotten how to beat. That image haunted the edges of my vision long after the scene had passed, a shock cut, gruesome, ghostly afterimage that refused to fade.

That moment at the top of the stairs is seared into memory—a grotesque vision that put the crack in the veneer that would soon shatter and destroy any lingering sense of safety. The face devoured, the exposed eye, wide and unblinking, seems to follow you, daring you to look away but making it impossible. It was as if the film itself reached out and slapped you awake—no longer just a story, but a visceral shock that turned my stomach and made my skin crawl, a ghastly reminder that in this new world, death is not just an ending, but a spectacle of violation and existential disturbance.

As night falls, the farmhouse becomes a pressure cooker. Ben and Barbra discover the Coopers and a young couple, Tom and Judy, hiding in the basement. Karen, the Coopers’ daughter, is feverish from a bite—a detail that, in true Chekhov’s Gun fashion, will pay off in the most gruesome way possible. Drawing on a classic narrative principle: if a story introduces a significant detail early on, that detail must become important later. Anton Chekhov famously said – From one of the most direct sources, in a letter from 1889, he wrote: ‘One must not put a loaded rifle on the stage if no one is thinking of firing it. It’s wrong to make promises you don’t mean to keep.” Therefore, Karen’s festering wound is significant.

Tensions flare: Harry Cooper wants everyone in the cellar, Ben insists on defending the ground floor.

Ben: “I’m telling you they can’t get IN here!”
Harry Cooper: “And I’m telling you they turned over our car! We were damn lucky to get away at all! Now you’re telling me these things can’t get through a lousy pile of wood?”

They compromise, sort of, but the real enemy is as much inside the house as out. News reports crackle with confusion—radiation from a Venus probe, government incompetence, and the chilling advice that only a blow to the head or fire will stop the ghouls. These lines capture the film’s tension, bleak humor, and iconic status in horror cinema.

Newscaster: All persons who die during this crisis from whatever cause will come back to life to seek human victims, unless their bodies are first disposed of by cremation.

 

Sheriff McClelland: Yeah, they’re dead. They’re all messed up.”

And then there’s that unforgettable procession: a naked group of ghouls, pale and unashamed, lurching toward the farmhouse with the inevitability of a slow-moving tide. Their bodies, stripped of humanity, shimmer in the moonlight like a grotesque ballet, each step a testament to the film’s refusal to look away from the horror it has conjured.

The survivors try to escape: To get the keys, heroically, Tom and Judy make a break for the truck, but a spilled can of gasoline turns their getaway into a fireball.

Outside, the world burns. When the truck explodes in a blossom of fire, the young couple’s desperate hope is snuffed out in an instant, their love story reduced to cinders and smoke. The ghouls gather around the wreckage as if at a family BBQ, their movements grotesquely communal as they feast on the charred remains—a macabre picnic under the indifferent stars. The sight is both revolting and mesmerizing, a reminder that in Romero’s world, death is not an ending but a ravenous beginning.

Back inside, the barricades begin to fail. The makeshift wooden barriers, tables, and rusty nails groan and splinter under the weight of clawing hands and grasping arms. Fingers snake through every gap, desperate and unrelenting, turning the walls into a living, breathing trap. The farmhouse becomes a ribcage about to shatter, the survivors the last fluttering heartbeats within, as panic and dread pulse in time with each new assault. Every key scene in Night of the Living Dead is a wound that refuses to close—a visceral, unforgettable reminder that fear is not just something you watch, but something that reaches out, grabs hold, and refuses to let go.

Harry Cooper: “Look! You two can do whatever you like! I’m going back down to the cellar, and you’d better decide! ’Cause I’m gonna board up that door, and I’m not going to unlock it again no matter what happens!”

The lights go out. The dead press in, relentless and hungry. Down in the basement, the horror devolves into something even more primal. Karen dies and reanimates, killing her mother with a trowel in a scene that still shocks with its Freudian brutality.

The daughter, once feverish and fragile, becomes a silent predator, her small hands closing around the trowel as she rises from the shadows. The sound of her mother’s screams—raw, animal, echoing off the stone—collides with the wet, sickening rhythm of the attack. It’s a tableau of innocence inverted, a child transformed into the harbinger of her parents’ doom, and the scene leaves you feeling hollowed out, as if the air itself has turned to bloody ice.

Upstairs, Barbra is pulled into the mob by her undead brother Johnny—her fate sealed by the past, quite literally coming back to consume her. Ben, now alone, retreats to the cellar—ironically, the very place Harry insisted was safest—and is forced to shoot the reanimated Coopers. He survives the night, only to be mistaken for a ghoul and shot by a posse of white men the next morning. His body is tossed onto a pyre with the rest of the dead, the film ending not with triumph, but with a bleak, documentary-like montage of burning corpses.

What makes Night of the Living Dead so enduring isn’t just its scares, but its allegorical bite.

This redefinition of the undead didn’t just launch the modern zombie genre; it also created an allegory for a society devouring itself from within. The film’s compressed, real-time narrative—90 minutes of escalating dread—captures the precise moment when history falls apart, when the old world is swallowed whole and nothing familiar remains.

The ghouls are more than monsters; they’re the past come back to devour the present, the mistakes of history clawing their way out of the grave. They are us.

The farmhouse, besieged on all sides, becomes a microcosm of a society collapsing in on itself—cooperation frays, fear triumphs, and the center cannot hold. Night of the Living Dead subverted horror conventions by refusing to offer hope or catharsis. The hero dies, the group fractures, and the world is left in ruins—a nihilistic tone that shocked audiences and critics alike, but which has since become a hallmark of the genre.

George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead revolutionized horror cinema on both a technical and thematic level, forever altering not just what audiences feared but how those fears reflected the world around them. Before Romero’s zombies in cinema, they were tethered to voodoo folklore and colonial anxieties—a far cry from the flesh-eating, apocalyptic ghouls that would soon shamble across America’s collective nightmares, or eventually sprinting, ferocious and relentless as in 28 Days Later 2002.

Romero’s film didn’t just change horror; it changed the way we see ourselves in the dark. Its influence is everywhere: in the flesh-eating zombies that now populate our nightmares, in the social commentary that pulses beneath the genre’s surface, and in the knowledge that sometimes, the scariest monsters are the ones who look just like us. Night of the Living Dead taught horror to speak to the world’s wounds. It is a film that refuses to die—forever shambling forward, hungry for new generations to discover its terrible, beautiful truth.

DAWN OF THE DEAD 1978

George A. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead 1978 begins not with hope but collapse. WGON-TV in Philadelphia is in chaos: emergency broadcasts warn of reanimated corpses devouring the living while society crumbles. Traffic reporter Stephen Andrews (David Emge) and producer Fran Parker (Gaylen Ross) flee via helicopter, joined by disillusioned SWAT officers Peter Washington (Ken Foree) and Roger DeMarco (Scott Reiniger). Their aerial escape reveals a nation unravelling—cities burn, rural enclaves fortify, and the dead shamble en masse. Romero’s camera lingers on this apocalypse with documentary starkness, framing highways as graveyards and suburbs as battlegrounds. This opening isn’t just a setup; it’s a requiem for modernity, where institutions fail and humanity’s fragility is laid bare.

The film’s pivot occurs when the quartet discovers the Monroeville Mall—a cathedral of consumerism shimmering in the Pennsylvania wilderness. They land, clear its undead, and barricade themselves inside. At first, it’s paradise: Fran models fur coats, Roger races motorcycles through department stores, and Peter savors the absurd luxury of a world where you can take anything you want. Romero contrasts these moments of hedonism with eerie wide shots of zombies clustered at escalators and glass storefronts, their hollow stares mirroring pre-apocalypse shoppers. The mall’s fluorescent glow and muzak score (by Goblin in international cuts) create a surreal dissonance—life as a discount-daydream, punctuated by the groans of the damned outside. This isn’t accidental; Romero, inspired by visits to Monroeville Mall, weaponizes the setting. The mall is both sanctuary and prison, a glittering trap where survival mutates into complacency.

Stephen: “Why do they come here?”Peter: “Some kind of instinct. Memory, of what they used to do. This was an important place in their lives.”

Later, Peter also says: “They’re us, that’s all, when there’s no more room in hell, the dead will walk the earth.”

Romero’s social critique sharpens as the survivors’ utopia warps Roger’s reckless bravado leads to a zombie bite, and his agonizing death—followed by reanimation and Peter’s mercy killing—shatters the group’s illusion of control. Months pass in montage: Fran’s pregnancy advances, Stephen obsessively guards “their” domain, and Peter smashes tennis balls in silent despair. The mall’s abundance becomes oppressive; its frozen food, designer clothes, and jewelry now symbolize emptiness. Romero intercuts this with decaying emergency broadcasts, emphasizing global collapse. When a nomadic biker gang storms the mall, shattering barricades and unleashing zombies, the film erupts into carnage. Stephen, consumed by possessive rage, ambushes the invaders—a choice that gets him bitten and devoured. In the climax, a reanimated Stephen leads zombies to their hidden quarters, forcing Peter and Fran to flee by helicopter as they lift off, low on fuel and flanked by undead.

Visually, Dawn of the Dead revolutionized horror. Cinematographer Michael Gornick used handheld shots for chaos (e.g., the SWAT raid’s claustrophobic violence), static frames for dread, and saturated colors to heighten the mall’s artifice. Tom Savini’s practical effects—decapitations, disembowelments, and the iconic helicopter-propeller decapitation—elevated gore into visceral art.

“I saw some pretty horrible stuff… I guess Vietnam was a real lesson in anatomy. This is the reason why my work looks so visceral and authentic. I am the only special effects man to have seen the real thing!” (Tom Savini)

His goal was always to create effects that felt both shocking and credible. Savini has also spoken about the playful, almost “magic trick” nature of his work with Romero:

“You are fooling people into believing in the illusion. I guess me and Romero wanted to be magicians of murder. If you see our names on the cinema billboard then you know you’re in for a really great magic show that will make you laugh but may also give you nightmares.”

Romero’s zombies aren’t just monsters; they’re darkly comic metaphors. Their lumbering through boutiques and food courts literalizes consumerism’s mindless ritual. It’s a visual dripping with class contempt.

The film’s racial politics also simmer beneath: the opening tenement raid, where police brutalize Black and Latino residents hoarding undead loved ones, parallels real-world systemic oppression. Peter, a Black protagonist wielding agency in a white-dominated genre, embodies resilience against a system that cannibalizes the marginalized.

Forty-six years later, Dawn’s allegory remains razor-sharp. Romero framed consumerism as a pandemic—one where malls are temples where people worship without thought, and humans, like zombies, define themselves by acquisition. The film’s genius lies in balancing satire with sincerity: Fran’s rejection of Stephen’s proposal underscores the collapse of meaning in a material world. When Peter and Fran vanish into an uncertain dawn, Romero offers no triumph, only ambiguity. Their helicopter, dwarfed by the undead-infested mall, becomes a symbol of precarious survival in a world where the true horror isn’t the dead, but what the living become when stripped of illusion. Dawn of the Dead endures not just as a gore milestone, but as a mirror to capitalism’s ravenous soul—a reminder that in the mall of life, we risk becoming lost souls and the walking dead long before we die.

#108 down, 42 to go! Your EverLovin’ Joey, formally & affectionately known as MonsterGirl!

MonsterGirl’s 150 Days of Classic Horror #96 Martin 1977

MARTIN 1977

“Things only seem to be magic. There is no real magic. There’s no real magic ever.”

This line, spoken by Martin, reflects Romero’s intention to strip away the supernatural and ground the horror in psychological and social reality.

George Romero’s Martin (1977) is the kind of film that slips under your skin and lingers—less a straightforward vampire tale than a quietly devastating meditation on alienation, desire, and the blurry line between myth and madness. If Romero made his name with the flesh-eating chaos of Night of the Living Dead 1968, here he turns inward, trading zombies for a protagonist who’s just as haunted, but heartbreakingly human.

The film awakens like a nightmare, breaking the surface of sleep with the opening scene arriving like a shard of glass in the quiet. Martin (John Amplas), a pale, withdrawn young man, sedates a woman on a train and drinks her blood—not with fangs and capes, but with a razor blade and a syringe. Romero strips away the Gothic trappings, grounding the horror in the mundane. Martin isn’t some ageless monster; he’s a lost soul, shuffling through the faded neighborhoods of Pittsburgh, caught between the superstitions of his Old World uncle Tata Cuda (Lincoln Maazel) and the numbing banality of modern America.

Romero’s style here is sly and unhurried, letting scenes breathe and discomfort build. The cinematography, all grainy textures and washed-out colors, turns the rustbelt setting into a landscape of decay—row houses, empty lots, and the kind of grocery stores where hope goes to die. The art direction is almost documentary in its realism, but Romero still finds moments of surreal beauty: Martin’s daydreams of classic vampire seductions, shot in luminous black and white, flicker through the film like fragments of a forgotten movie.

The supporting cast is pitch-perfect. Maazel is both pitiable and terrifying as Tata Cuda, clinging to garlic and crucifixes, convinced Martin is “Nosferatu.” Christine Forrest brings warmth and complexity as Christina, the only person who tries to reach Martin on a human level. But it’s Amplas who anchors the film—his Martin is all awkwardness and longing, a boy trapped in a nightmare he can’t escape or fully understand. There’s a gentleness to his performance that makes the violence all the more unsettling; you’re never sure if Martin is a monster, a victim, or both.

Donald Rubinstein’s score is a revelation—moody, jazzy, and mournful, it weaves through the film like a half-remembered lullaby, reinforcing the sense of loneliness and dread without ever overpowering the story. The music, much like the film itself, is haunting but leaves much to the imagination, letting emotion seep in at the edges.

There are key scenes that have stuck with me: Martin’s awkward phone calls to a late-night radio host, where he’s dubbed “The Count” and treated as a joke; his tentative, doomed romance with a lonely housewife; the moments when fantasy and reality blur, and you’re left wondering if Martin’s “curse” is supernatural or psychological. The violence is sudden, intimate, and never glamorous—Romero refuses to let you look away from the pain, but he also refuses to let you judge.

Critically, Martin has grown in stature over the years, now regarded as one of Romero’s most nuanced and quietly radical films. At its core, it’s less about vampirism than about the hunger to belong, the ache of being unseen, and the stories we tell ourselves to survive. In Romero’s hands, horror isn’t just about what goes bump in the night—it’s about the shadows that move through empty rooms, the old sins that echo in our dreams, and the quiet terror of being alone in a world that doesn’t believe in monsters, but still manages to create them.

“Martin is a vampire in that he drinks the blood of his victims, but to categorise him as such, in the traditional sense, is to not only misunderstand him, but to forgive him in a way.”

Romero goes on to challenge audiences to question why we so readily compromise our morals when faced with the tragic archetype of the vampire, and whether anyone is so innately monstrous that we can perceive their attempts to restrain their urges as noble. He asserts: “[Monsters]… exist in us and among us […] we should know. We created them.” This suggests Romero saw Martin not as a supernatural villain, but as a reflection of human nature and the myths we create to explain our darkest impulses.

#96 Down, 54 to go! Your EverLovin Joey, formally & affectionately known as MonsterGirl!

MonsterGirl’s 150 Days of Classic Horror #30 The Crazies 1973

THE CRAZIES 1973

George A. Romero’s The Crazies (1973) is a thought-provoking horror film that blends societal critique with visceral storytelling, showcasing Romero’s penchant for using genre cinema to explore political and cultural anxieties. Romero, known as the “Godfather of Horror,” had already revolutionized the genre – the art of horror filmmaking – with his breakthrough Night of the Living Dead (1968), which established his ability to use horror as a vehicle for social commentary. He introduced a modern brand of deconstructed horror no one had seen before, incorporating a raw intensity through allegory that resonated with audiences. It certainly shook me to my core. I saw it during its theatrical release and could barely watch the screen without squinting through my hand or looking away completely. Zombies eating raw or BBQed intestines still make me want to wretch!

Romero’s background significantly influenced the creation of The Crazies in several ways: the director’s early exposure to film through frequent subway trips to Manhattan to rent and view film reels likely contributed to his innovative approach to filmmaking. His early passion for cinema, particularly his interest in the visually experimental film The Tales of Hoffmann, inspired him to explore the power of visual media and experiment with the medium.

His experience shooting short films and TV commercials after graduating from college in 1960 honed his skills in visual storytelling. Leveraging his background in experimental filmmaking, commercial work, and socially conscious horror influenced Romero to create the visceral and impactful imagery in The Crazies, pushing the boundaries that powerfully critique authority and explore the fragility of social order through the horror genre.

The Crazies, though less commercially successful at its release, has since gained recognition as one of his most ambitious works, reflecting the turbulent social climate of 1970s America. The film is described as his most politically paranoid work, reflecting a deep distrust of government institutions and their potential for harmful overreach.

Romero imbued The Crazies with sharp political commentary as it follows the chaos that ensues when a military biological weapon, code-named “Trixie,” contaminates the water supply of a small Pennsylvania town, driving the residents into homicidal madness or killing the townspeople outright. As martial law is imposed, soldiers and scientists struggle to contain the outbreak, but their efforts only worsen the crisis and the violence and paranoia that breaks loose. Romero examines the interplay between individual humanity and systemic failures. This idea blurs the line between the infected and uninfected, suggesting societal breakdown reveals pre-existing moral decay rather than creating it. One of the film’s central themes is the inherent violence within human nature. Romero portrays the infected townspeople not as monstrous creatures but as ordinary individuals whose latent psychosis is unleashed—a chilling reminder that madness and brutality are intrinsic aspects of humanity.

The story focuses on a group of survivors—including Vietnam veterans David and Clank—who attempt to escape both the infected townspeople and the oppressive military presence. The cast includes Lane Carroll, Will McMillan, Harold Wayne Jones, and cult favorite Lynn Lowry (Cronenberg’s Shivers 1975), whose performances capture the desperation and paranoia of individuals caught in a collapsing society.

Another major theme of The Crazies is the critique of authority and institutional incompetence. The military’s response to the crisis is marked by paranoia, bureaucratic dysfunction, and dehumanization. This anti-establishment stance echoes real-world anxieties of the era, particularly those stemming from events like the Vietnam War, civil unrest, and incidents such as the military using violence against civilians, as in the Kent State shootings.

Romero uses this portrayal to highlight how systems of power and institutions like the military brutal containment prioritize control over compassion or justice, reflecting broader disillusionment with government and military failures during the Vietnam War era. These themes resonate with 1970s audiences grappling with mistrust of authority following events like Kent State and Watergate, but also beyond their historical context, offering a timeless reflection on how fear and authoritarianism can amplify crises rather than resolve them. Soldiers are depicted not as saviors but as oppressive agents whose faceless uniforms and aggressive tactics alienate them from the very civilians they aim to protect. 

He also delves into the problems inherent in power structures, presenting the government’s handling of the outbreak as equally monstrous as the infection itself. The “Trixie task force” embodies a cold utilitarianism, treating human lives as expendable in pursuit of abstract national security goals.

By incorporating imagery reminiscent of these historical moments—such as military violence against civilians—the film taps into the collective fear of a society unraveling under its own weight. Thematically, The Crazies explores issues of dehumanization, loss of autonomy, and dissolution. The infected townspeople symbolize not only physical contagion but also psychological and societal collapse.

Despite its modest production scale, The Crazies is ambitious in scope and execution. Romero’s use of multiple characters and locations creates a sense of widespread chaos that mirrors societal fragmentation. The film’s sardonic humor further underscores its critique of human folly in the face of disaster, making it both unsettling and darkly satirical.

Finally, The Crazies explores the fragility of social order. The chaos in Evans City symbolizes how quickly societal norms can collapse under pressure. Romero contrasts moments of fleeting humanity—such as soldiers showing empathy—with scenes of looting, violence, and destruction, emphasizing how crises erode moral boundaries. Through its low-budget aesthetic and grim narrative, The Crazies presents a harrowing critique of human nature and institutional power. In retrospect, The Crazies stands as an underrated gem within Romero’s oeuvre—a film that not only entertains but also challenges viewers to confront uncomfortable truths about power, responsibility, and humanity’s capacity for self-destruction.

#30 down, 120 to go! Your EverLovin’ Joey, formally & affectionately known as MonsterGirl!

A Trailer a Day Keeps the Boogeyman Away! 11 terrifying tidbits from 1980-1983

THE ATTIC 1980

“Louise’s life downstairs is a living hell… and upstairs lurks a haunting nightmare!- She’s Daddy’s Little Girl … FOREVER!” 

Carrie Snodgress has always been an actress possessed of great dimension, just watch her as Tina Balsar the persecuted down-trodden housewife in director Frank Perry’s Diary of a Mad Housewife 1970. In The Attic Snodgress is yet again a repressed character Louise Elmore, this time a Librarian who is caring for her cruel and ruthlessly controlling wheelchair-bound father Wendell portrayed by a particularly nasty Ray Milland.

Milland toward the end of his career had started appearing in some of these low budget horror/exploitation films like X, The Man with the X-Ray Eyes 1963, Daughter of the Mind 1969, Frogs 1972. The 80s started to really slide into a kaleidoscope of cheap themes and shock value moments. It doesn’t detract from Milland’s contribution to film history, nor does it malign either his or Snogress’ depth of acting. Director George Edwards  ( produced Frogs 1972 with Milland, Queen of Blood 1966, Games 1967, How Awful About Allan 1970, What’s the Matter with Helen? 1971, The Killing Kind 1973, Ruby 1977 – all these films with the exception of Frogs, Edwards worked with Curtis Harrington as the director.

You can see Harrington’s influence on The Attic as it represents a small enclosed family environment creates psychological demons, mental disturbances or what I call director Harrington’s The Horror of Personality. With most of Harrington’s work the narrative is less centered around supernatural forces building it’s framework around the product of mental illness and the dysfunctional family trope acted out within closed in spaces, where relationships over time begin disintegrating, with acts of cruelty, despair, loneliness, fear and repression- the family then, becomes the monster…

The Attic is an angry, aggressive, and psychologically sadistic film, where Snodgress is yet again persecuted and trapped in a dreadful life. The hapless Louise is jilted by her fiancé and left at the altar leaving psychic scars, where she begins to go in and out of reality. Calling the Missing Persons Bureau on a regular basis looking for her lost love. She begins to fantasize about rejecting her abusive father whom she must do everything for. After 19 years of being left alone, Louise doesn’t find much joy in life, except for drinking and dreaming about trips she’ll never take, committing arson at the Library, and spending time with her pet monkey Dicky the Chimp. She is befriended by a co-worker who tries to help bring Louise back into the real world again, but the shocking truth that lurks in that creepy attic won’t stay locked away forever!

The Attic also stars Rosemary Murphy who is usually scary in her own right, at least she scares me since You’ll Like My Mother 1972!

PROM NIGHT 1980

“…Some will be crowned, others will lose their heads”

This is one of the earliest masked killer slasher movies where sexually active teenagers are being stalked on the night of their prom because they were responsible for the death of their classmate years ago. Prom Night features Scream Queen Jamie Lee Curtis who set the trend for good girls or The Final Girl trope… you know- the one who survives because of their integrity, purity, and smarts! Also starring one of my favorites Leslie Nielsen and Antoinette Bower.

SILENT SCREAM (1980) us release

“Quick! Scream! Too late! You’re dead”

During her first semester at college co-ed Scotty Parker (Rebecca Balding) is one of several college students who rents a room from Mrs. Engels, the Junoesque Yvonne De Carlo. But there is something very strange going on at this seaside mansion/boarding house–even murder! Mrs.Engels lives at the mansion with her weird neurotic son Mason (Brad Rearden) Scotty is joined by Steve Doubet (Jack Towne), Peter Ransom (John Widelock), and Doris Prichart (Juli Andelman). When Widelock is stabbed to death out on the beach, Police Lt. Sandy McGiver (Cameron Mitchell) investigates and uncovers the family secret. Silent Scream is a more eerie and less typical 80s slasher flick, perhaps it’s due to the weight of the strong cast that inhabits their roles, in what might be a predictable script still possesses that ability to convey the dread in a quietly stylish manner. Co-Produced by Joan Harris

Silent Scream has a claustrophobic melancholic atmosphere instead of utilizing gore it relies more on its Gothic gloomy sensibility, a sense of creepy voyeuristic camera work that makes you feel uncomfortable.

Two names -All you need to know to see this eerie obscure 80s gem Yvonne De Carlo as Mrs. Engels and Barbara Steele as Victoria Engels.

DEADLY BLESSINGS 1981

“Pray you’re not blessed”

Director Wes Craven delves into American rural Gothic horror

After her husband Jim, an ex-Hittite (Doug Barr) has been shunned by his people for having moved away, and marrying an outside. One night after they’ve moved back near the neighboring sect, Jim goes outside to find the word Incubus painted on their barn and then is mysteriously crushed to death by his tractor. A series of grisly murders ensue mostly in broad daylight, as Jim’s widow Martha Schmidt (Maren Jensen) feels increasingly threatened by the sinister neighboring religious community led by the enigmatic Isaiah Schmidt (Ernest Borgnine) who seems to be fanatically obsessed with the idea that Martha is an ‘incubus’ and must be dealt with fire and brimstone!

Deadly Blessing also plants a figure of a dated trope–the ambiguous gender & sexuality of one of the characters. That trope stems from a time when gay or transgendered characters were represented as obsessive, neurotic & at times, dangerous. I don’t endorse this weak and disparaging area of the plot, yet I allow myself to experience Wes Craven’s provocative film as a slice of horror history from a decade that hadn’t gotten it quite right yet. Where the film could have taken a bold step in expanding on this subplot instead it is fueled by subversive incitement.

Craven’s film ultimately relies on the supernatural subtext that is fueling the horror and leaves the other theme to hang out there on its own to be (justifiably to some)- offensive. Too many films with gender-fluid characters in past films were represented by psychos, deviants, and killers.

Deadly Blessings co-stars a young Sharon Stone, popular 70s actress (and one of my favorites) Lois Nettleton, Susan Buckner, Lisa Hartman, and familiar Craven regular Michael Berryman. Directed by Wes Craven

Some IMDb Trivia

Sharon Stone’s first big speaking role in a theatrical feature.

The name of the isolated rural farm where the farmers and Hittites lived and worked was “Our Blessing”.

Wes Craven compared his work with actor Ernest Borgnine to John Carpenter’s work with Donald Pleasance in the original “Halloween”. He states that Borgnine was the first “big name actor” he had worked with and was at first intimidated by the actor.

Ernest Borgnine had to be taken to the hospital to be treated for a head injury following a mishap involving a horse and buggy. Moreover, Borgnine returned to the set to continue acting in the film three days later.

Actor Ernest Borgnine, who had won a Best Actor Academy Award for Marty (1955), which also was Borgnine’s only ever Oscar nomination, was nominated for a Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Supporting Actor for Deadly Blessing (1981), but lost out on the Razzie to Steve Forrest for Mommie Dearest (1981).

THE INCUBUS 1981

“The dreams. The nightmares. The desires. The fears. The mystery. The revelation. The warning: He is the destroyer”

WARNING: Though not overtly graphic Incubus is suggestive of rape. For anyone who might be triggered by sexual violence in film, I would advise you to skip this portion of the post and/or the film entirely!

Back in the day when I read a lot of horror fiction, I have a vague recollection of Ray Russell’s (Mr. Sardonicus 1961, Premature Burial 1962, X-The Man With The X-Ray Eyes 1963), novel knocking me out with its supernatural mythology and its brutality. Of course, when it was adapted to the screen in 1982 directed by John Hough (The Legend of Hell House 1973, Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry 1974, The Watcher in the Woods 1980, American Gothic 1987) you know I was there with my milk duds, raisinets, popcorn and a large icy cup of Pepsi expecting something powerful and Incubus collided with the accepted one-gendered fiend that I had grown up seeing within the constraints of a fairly “cultural conservative” as Carol Clover puts it, driven classical horror industry, stories like werewolves, vampires, mummies, phantoms and mad doctors turned into vile fiends.

As Carol Clover states in her Men, Women and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film-“stories that stem from the one-sex era, and for all their updating, they still carry with them, to a greater or lesser degree, a premodern sense of sexual difference…}…{and some people are impossible to tell apart (the figure in God Told Me To who is genitally ambiguous -the doctor did not know what sex to assign, the pubescent girl in Sleepaway Camp who turns out to be a boy, the rapist in The Incubus whose ejaculate consists of equal parts of semen and menstrual blood.”

Incubus is a supernatural film that sneaks into the 80s but carries with it the demonology sensibility of the early-mid 1970s, The Exorcist (1973), The Omen (1976). Adapted from Ray Russell’s disquieting novel about a demon with a dangerously sized phallus who can incarnate in human form, committing several savage sexual assaults and murders in the small California town of Galen. John Cassavetes plays Dr. Sam Cordell who examines the survivor of one of the assaults and is disturbed by the violence of the attack, learning that her uterus has been ruptured. When the local librarian is killed, John Ireland is his usual brackish self this time playing Sheriff Hank Walden, and team up believing that these brutal attacks are the work of only one perpetrator and not a gang. Kerrie Keane plays a reporter Laura Kincaid who insinuates herself into the investigation and begins an affair with Sam. Erin Flannery plays Sam’s young teenage daughter Jenny who is dating Tim Galen (Duncan McIntosh) who has nightmarish visions of the attacks while he is in a sleeping state. His Grandmother Agatha (Helen Hughes -Storm of the Century 1999 tele-series) tries to convince her Grandson that he is not responsible for these horrible events, but she knows more than she is telling, about the arcane secret the town is hiding and the true history of the venerable family name of Galen.

NIGHT SCHOOL 1981

A is for Apple B is for Bed C is for Co-ed D is for Dead F is for Failing to keep your Head!

Aka known as Terror Eyes

Night School has an unnerving tone, an almost oppressive atmosphere that looms over the film. The 80s was fertile for the slasher films that were popping up in variations of the same narrative, using different methods of death as the centerpiece to highlight the story. In this film, a mysterious killer is decapitating students at a night school for women. I won’t reveal the killer, but I will say that there is misogyny afoot. Originally picked to direct was Alfred Sole, best known for his phenomenal psychological horror masterpiece Alice, Sweet Alice (1976) which would have most definitely improved on the depressing aura the film gives off. Directed by Ken Hughes who wrote the screenplays for The Trials of Oscar Wilde 1960 and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang 1968. His direction was superior in the dark and dogged Wicked As They Come 1956 starring Arlene Dahl and Phillip Carey.

Night School stars Rachel Ward, Leonard Mann, and Drew Snyder.

ALONE IN THE DARK 1982

“They’re out… for blood! Don’t let them find you!”

Along in the Dark is a highly charged psycho thriller that wants to be a black comedy. The inmates let loose upon an unsuspecting town and mayhem ensues when they target the home of Pleasance’s (Dr. Leo Bain) therapist Dr. Dan Potter (Dwight Schultz) psychiatrist. During a statewide blackout, a group of 3 particularly nasty homicidal maniacs get free from their maximum security ward at the mental Institution and set out on an adventure. Alone in the Dark opens with Donald Pleasance as a short-order cook who has gone berserk and wielding a meat cleaver. Martin Landau is splendid as crazed Byron ‘Preacher’ Sutcliff who likes to set things on fire. Then there’s Erland Van Lidth (from The Wanderers 1979) as a sex maniac Ronald “fatty” Elster with a penchant for younger kids. The best psycho next to Landau, is Jack Palance. The Special Effects are by Tom Savini.

Alone in the Dark is a frenetic ride and you must watch out for the scene when Preacher insists he wants the mailman’s on the bicycle’s hat!

CREEPSHOW 1982

“The Most Fun You’ll Ever Have… BEING SCARED!”

An anthology that tells five terrifying tales based on the E.C. horror comic books of the 1950s. Directed by George A. Romero, with the original screenplay by Stephen King. Stars include Hal Holbrook, Adrienne Barbeau, Fritz Weaver, Leslie Nielsen, Carrie Nye, E.G. Marshall, Viveca Lindfors, Ed Harris, Ted Danson, Stephen King,

HALLOWEEN 3: SEASON OF THE WITCH 1983

After the failure of Halloween II (1978) to excite people at the box office, John Carpenter decided to put a different twist on the creepy goings on for Halloween III (1983) and adapt a script from Nigel Kneale who wrote the Quartermass series, who removed his name from the credits, leaving Tommy Lee Wallace as the writer. I do not hate this film in the way that other fans do. I rather like the odd and malevolent tone of the film, like a dark Halloween fairy tale journey. The idea, children all over America can not wait to get their hands on 3 frightfully popular offerings of rubber masks for Halloween. The jingle for the TV ad alone is enough to send suspicious shivers up a more discerning eye. There is a plot run by an old Druid toy-maker (Dan O’Herlihy) who is perfectly menacing and wants to actually harm the children once they wear the deadly masks, in order to bring back the olden days of black witchcraft and magic. There’s also a sense of a vengeful bitter spirit in Conal Cochran (O’Herlihy) toward consumerism and the misguided exploitation of Halloween.

Halloween III: Season of the Witch also stars Tom Atkins and Stacey Nelkin.

THE SENDER 1982

“Your dreams will never be the same.”

This is British director Roger Christian’s first feature film he worked as assistant art director on the tense thriller And Soon the Darkness (1970)

The Sender works on so many levels, first of all, it stars an impressive cast of accomplished actors. The incredible Shirley Knight, and two very thoughtful actors from the 1980s- Kathryn Harrold, and Zelijko Ivanek.

From Kim Newman’s Nightmare Movies talks about the trend that began with Brian DePalma’s Carrie (1976) “created a briefly popular horror movie sub-genre, the ‘Psichopath’ film. Damien Thorn and Carrie White, like Jim Hutton in Psychic Killer (1975), Alan Bates in The Shout (1978), Lisa Pelikan in Jennifer (1978) Robert Thompson in Patrick (1979) and Robert Powell in Harlequin (1979) are ‘Psichopaths’, seemingly ordinary individuals with hidden, awesome paranormal powers. The wish fulfillment fantasy element of the Psichopath film is obvious.The usual formula finds the Psichopath humiliated, abused and pushed beyond endurance, whereupon immense mental powers are unleashed in an orgy of mass destruction.”

I would also include Brian DePalma’s The Fury (1978) featuring Amy Irving who possesses the psycho-kinetic powers.

When The Sender (Ivanek) is sent to an Institution after a public suicide attempt, psychiatrist Kathryn Harrold as Gail Farmer realizes that he possesses the ability to channel his frightening and often volatile visions to receptive people on the psyche ward. There are truly enigmatic hallucinatory segments of the film which create real apprehension and shivers. In one particular scene where they are juicing Ivanek with electro-shock therapy, his mental waves send a storm of havoc through his personal pain. In the midst of this theme there lies an even dark more disturbing element to the story. There are ghostly visitations from his creepy mother played by the amazing Shirley Knight as Jerolyn. She would make a formidable more temperate yet sinister sister of Carrie White’s hellacious mother -Piper Laurie!

I have followed Shirley Knight’s underrated and outstanding career from her divine performance as Polly in Sidney Lumet’s The Group (1966), the tv series Naked City 1962, The Eleventh Hour 1963, as the gently Noelle Anderson in The Outer Limits 1963 episode The Man Who Was Never Born co-starring Martin Landau. The Defenders 1964, The Fugitive 1964-66, Petulia 1968, The Rain People 1969, The Bold Ones, Circle of Fear, Streets of San Fransisco 1973, Medical Center, Marcus Welby, M.D, Murder, She Wrote, Law & Order 1991 and more… The gravity of each of Knight’s performances has a quality that draws you into her orbit –experiencing her as genuine and engaging. Even as the wraith-like mother figure who comes calling on her son- The Sender, Knight makes you believe in the low-key, spine-chilling moments on screen. She is the catalyst for The Sender’s secret dilemma.

At times The Sender sends its universe into mayhem, at other times it’s a very creepy, restrained atmospheric horror story that is perhaps one of the best films of the 1980s.

CURTAINS 1983

The one impression I took away from Curtains is the iconic sinister hag mask that the killer wears and the scythe or sickle they wield as they creepily skated across the small pond. It’s the kind of moment from a moment that stays in the brain forever!

This stylish Canadian horror film is directed by cinematographer Richard Ciupka (Atlantic City 1980) Curtains stars John Vernon as the typically caustic alpha male Jonathan Stryker director and British Scream Queen Samantha Eggar  (The Collector 1965, Doctor Doolittle 1967, The Dead Are Alive 1972, A Name For Evil 1973, All The Kind Strangers 1974, The Seven-Per-Cent Solution 1976, The Brood 1979) who plays Samantha Sherwood an actress who has always gotten top billing in Stryker’s works and in his bed. Samantha believes she is getting the role of a lifetime, the chance to play ‘Audra’ in his next film. Stryker insists that Samantha inhabits the role, to bring out the realism of Audra’s character by having herself committed to an asylum as background research. (It seems Audra was a psychiatric patient.) Stryker is a sadist and leaves Samantha in the hospital for an indeterminate amount of time, while he auditions other young actresses- each who has their own motivations for desperately wanting the part.

Samantha escapes her confinement and goes back to the menacing old mountain cabin during a snowstorm, where Stryker is putting the various women through their acting trials.

Interesting that the character of Samantha in studying the mindset of a mentally ill woman, becomes too well aware of insanity during her own ordeal. The film does a particularly effective job of projecting the intensity that actors experience when trying to lose themselves in a role, keeping their footing in reality.

At the center of this interesting chamber piece is the psychopath in a nightmarish old hag mask who begins killing off the women!

Curtains also stars Linda Thorson (Tara King in The Avengers 1968-69), Anne Ditchburn, Lynne Griffin (Black Christmas 1974) Sandee Currie, Lesleh Donaldson, and Deborah Burgess. 

According to Mark Allan Gunnells in his essay in Hidden Horror edited by Aaron Christensen-Curtains took 3 years to make it to it’s release due to reshoots and rewrites. “It is suggested that a lot of the problems stemmed from producer Peter Simpson who, having produced the Jamie Lee Curtis vehicle Prom Night, wanted another straight forward horror flick. Director Richard Ciupka, on the other hand, chose to go against the established slasher grain, bringing more European sensibility to the production. The original screenplay even had a supernatural element, with a creature designed (but never used) by makeup legend Greg Cannom (…) As Gunnells points out about the films many chilling scenes, a few that stand out are the dream sequence with a creepy life size doll and the chase scene that involves a hiding place that winds up becoming a “deathtrap.”

 

This is Your EverLovin’ MonsterGirl sayin’ See ya round the snack bar! Save me a big box of Raisinets!