INT. LIVING ROOM. DAY
MICHONNE: I’m every woman, it’s all in me!
RICK GRIMES: Hello, sweetheart, what are you up to?
MICHONNE: Oh! You startled me! I was just, um, practising my sword skills.
RICK GRIMES: Really? Because it looked like you were singing Whitney Houston’s greatest hits.
MICHONNE: No, that was me thinking of something witty to say for when I finally kill The Governor.
RICK GRIMES: I see. You know, Whitney Houston’s probably a zombie now.
Greetings, Glancers! It’s been an age since I’ve done one of these, so I decided to fall back on what I know best – horror movies. You can’t talk about the history of Horror movies without talking about George A Romero. Few film-makers can truly be said to have changed the game, especially within the horror genre, but Romero was one of those few. Taking the zombie sub-genre out of its voodoo/mind control past and turning it into something completely different, making the living dead mindless pastiches of whatever was going on in society at the time and making their main desire to chomp upon living flesh. Romero created the modern zombie and almost all of its rules and tropes, and his original trilogy is still the high-bar against which everything else is measured.
Romero wasn’t just a zombie guy but his films were always about something once you smeared away the surface. He retained an indie ethos from day one until the end and embodies the true spirit of story-telling and film-making – to pick up a camera and tell a story while ignoring the pressures of money making and business. Typically always based in his hometown of Pittsburgh, Romero’s films didn’t shy away from showing the lives and struggles of real people – the blue-collar types he knew so well, nor was he afraid of revealing their dark side. He wasn’t one for sugar-coating or creating an ensemble of working class heroes – he was clued in enough to know that, given the right or wrong situation, the young, old, rich, poor, were equally capable of making heroic or monstrous decisions.
Watching any interview with Romero or with those who worked with him, it’s clear the guy had a love for stories, for life, and for making people squirm in the face of gore or uncomfortable truths. His passing marked the end of a generation and we may never see his like again.
10. Bruiser
A movie I came to quite late because most of Romero’s non-Dead movies can be a pain to find. This is a lot of fun, and a different type of movie you might expect – the humour more overt and darker than a gallon of gore. A sort-of attack on Corporations and the empty, faceless lives of the executive class, it’s the tale of a man reduced to a blank slate allowing him to live out his murderous fantasies.
9. Knightriders
There aren’t enough movies about jousting, especially ones which replaces the horses with motorcycles. That’s…. that’s pretty much all the recommendation you should need. It reunites some of the guys from Dawn Of The Dead, stars Ed Harris, and features a little seen Stephen King cameo.
8. Monkey Shines
This is another one of those movies which was/is quite difficult to get your hands on, at least over here. Twenty years into his career, this was Romero’s first major Studio film and if anything he can be guilty of over-reaching and trying to pack in as much ‘stuff’ as possible. While the rest of the horror world in the late 80s were ironically pulling Romero-esque gore fests and comedies, Romero instead opted for a thriller with a bizarre premise – that of a wheelchair bound former athlete who gets a helper monkey (pray…for… Mojo) which in turn becomes psychotically attached to the man. They don’t make them like that anymore. For such a silly idea, there are creepy moments and Jason Beghe heads up the little known cast with a convincing performance. Stanley Tucci appears in a minor role – you wonder if Romero had got some bigger names (though I can’t see many A-Listers jumping on board with a screenplay such as this) maybe the film would have been more successful and opened a few more doors.
7. The Dark Half
Romero and King always seemed like two peas in a pod – socially and politically conscious blood and guts shovellers with a keen sense of dark and often zany humour. It makes sense then that they would conspire to work together, on multiple occasions. This time, Romero helms a straight adaptation of one of King’s more outlandish novels – the tale of a writer (of course) whose pen-name alter-ego seemingly comes to life with murderous intent, not happy being retired as the writer pursues a more literary career. It’s a great premise and King pulls it off in the novel while Romero gives it a decent stab for the big screen. He is ably helped by several against type performances – Timothy Hutton as both Thad Beaumont and George Stark and Michael Rooker as the heroic Alan Pangborn. Veterans such as Royal Dano and Julie Harris also show up. It’s a pleasingly dark and grimy film, though it rarely racks up any real scares or tension even as it produces some effective gore. My King mega friend from school and I used to pass this around in VHS form to each other and frequently scrawl ‘the sparrows are flying again’ on the classroom walls.
6. Land Of The Dead
In 2005 the impossible happened – Romero returned with another entry in the Dead series. Enough time had passed that the people who grew up with his movies now had a more influential voice – a voice loud enough to rightfully proclaim Romero as the legend he was. I remember the hype surrounding this when it approached release – heightened by a couple of factors; first, that zombies were suddenly cool again thanks to 28 Days Later and the Dawn Of The Dead remake, and secondly that Romero was actually making another movie. It had been five years since Bruiser – which no-one really saw, and that had come seven years after The Dark Half. He had only made two movies in fourteen years and now he was back to show the youngsters how the zombie genre should be done, this time with a big budget to play with. With all of that hype, Land Of The Dead was maybe a disappointment to some when it dropped – I saw it at release and loved it, though I admittedly knew it wasn’t as strong as the first three. Still, it was a lot of fun and had some great performances and cameos – Dennis Hopper, John Leguizamo, Asia Argento, and the opportunity to see Romero’s work getting the love on the big screen was enough for me. There’s enough juicy satire to gnaw on – issues of class, wealth, and power are all touched upon, and of course there is a tonne of gore and action to enjoy.
5. Martin
I’d loved Romero films (namely those below) for a while before I really understood what a director was and how to find their body of work. Once I did, Martin was one of the first movies I tracked down thinking ‘first he did zombies, I wonder what he can do with vampires’. I was a little bewildered by Martin at first, though savvy enough to still enjoy it. Martin is a strange, powerful, and thought-provoking low budget film about a young man who believes he is the reincarnated spirit of a vampire. Or maybe not even reincarnated, that he has been a vampire for many many years, beyond what his body would lead you to believe. The film opens with a bleak and downbeat scene as Martin stalks and kills a woman on a train – he has no fangs and no apparent supernatural abilities and so resorts to drugging his victims and cutting them with a razor blade. At first it looks like he is a deluded psychopath, until we meet his grand-uncle whose fears seem to give validity to the claims. The old man is forced to look after Martin after Martin’s parents die, yet he clearly believes Martin to be a vampire as he hangs garlic and crucifixes around the house – to no avail.
There’s enough there to make for an interesting, grimy horror flick in itself but Romero adds further layers – Martin is obviously sexually frustrated and lonely, finding solace through calls to a local DJ, and Martin becomes a cult favourite to the audience of this radio show. We get to see romanticized flashbacks or dreams of Martin’s past exploits as a vampire, and it is never clear what the truth is. All we know is that he is clearly dangerous, and probably deranged. The longer cut of the movie gives even more detail about Martin and his relationships. It’s a shame the film is so low-budget – John Amplas is about as recognisable a name as you’ll get here, though he’s only recognisable from his small role in Day Of The Dead. It’s a film which is now heralded as one of the most unique vampire movies and is one which deserves a wider audience.
4. Creepshow
There’s something comforting about Creepshow for horror fans. It could be that you grew up with the movie and it has a certain nostalgia, or it could be that you grew up with the EC Comics and the film is a love-letter to those. It could simply be that the film is a lot of fun and was made by two of the greatest contributors, fans, and masters of the genre that there has ever been and that their adoration for horror shines through. King and Romero teamed up to craft an anthology – maybe the strongest anthology there is – inspired by the creepy and gruesome comics and stories they grew up with. They tell the stories through the eyes of a child, fascinated with the macabre and gory, and shunned by those who don’t understand. It’s probably a position all horror fans have been in at some point – being shamed for loving what we love, being kept away from it against our will, and being punished for being different. It’s a clever ploy which helps to make Creepshow an ideal gateway movie for kids just getting into the genre.
None of that would matter if the stories themselves weren’t great. None of the stories are weak – some are clearly better than others, some are more reliant on laughs (although all have some element of humour, dark as it may be), but all have something memorable. It gets off to a strong start with a story written by King specifically for the film – Father’s Day – in which the zombie of a miserly old man comes back to take bloody revenge on the daughter who killed him and the various descendants who want his money. It features a terrific zombie crawling out of the grave scene and some nifty effects and make-up courtesy of Tom Savini (who else?). It’s the same sort of revenge story who tend to see a lot in horror anthologies, but it’s a lot of fun.
The next segment is my least favourite, as King himself stars as a backwater hick who slowly becomes infected by some alien plant organism. King’s antics are both funny and cringe-worthy and the story is an amusing filler, even if it does feature a shotgun-based suicide. Something To Tide You Over is my second favourite and maybe the one which stood out most to me when I first saw it as a kid, thanks to the twist and cynical tone. I couldn’t remember the name of the movie, but I always remembered this and the next story. It’s about a man, played by Leslie Nielsen of all people, who subjects his wife and her lover to a terrifying demise; after finding out about their infidelity, he buries them up to their necks on the beach outside his home, then watches and gloats as the tide gets every closer. This being Creepshow, the dead soon return with their own plan for revenge. Ted Danson and Dawn Of The Dead’s Gaylen Ross star as the couple – great stuff from Savini again.
The Crate is the best segment here, genuinely creepy and – again – a lot of fun. It’s about a professor who finds a long-lost crate from an Arctic expedition. Naturally, the crate houses some sort of creature which begins killing and eating anyone who comes near. Another professor sees this as the ideal solution to the problem of his drunk, abusive wife – the great Adrienne Barbeau. Finally, They’re Creeping Up On You isn’t the best story but it has a strange atmosphere and something sickly which has always freaked me out a little. I don’t care about bugs or cleanliness or any of the other paranoia which goes on in the story, but still there’s something about the story which gets to me. E.G Marshall hams it up as businessman who lives in a hermetically sealed apartment – he only contact with the outside world to shout orders to his staff and receive calls from disgruntled people saying how much he is hated. Then the cockroaches come. It’s the atmosphere – maybe it’s the fact that we don’t really know if the time is future, present, past – it could be some apocalyptic time and place, or it could be modern day. Mad Max is the only film to play a similar trick on me.
3. Day Of The Dead
For a long time this was seen as the black sheep of Romero’s Dead trilogy. In truth, it isn’t as culturally important or revolutionary as the first two, but show me a trilogy where each individual film changes the game. I’d say the original trilogy comes closest. While Day Of The Dead may not be as important, it’s still better than almost any other zombie movie and it ranks as having some of the best gore effects you’ll ever see. There’s no excuse for this to have not won an Oscar. Moreover, the claustrophobic setting and cast of characters are just as interesting as the previous two movies and if anything both are taken to extremes. As it’s Romero, there are themes upon themes, the most front and centre being the the war between military and science, war and understanding, thought and action, science and superstition. Taking that to its extreme, it’s a film about the dangers of two opposing sides unwilling to consider the position of the other, the fallout, and those caught in the middle. There just happens to be millions of zombies lurking around to pile on the pressure. Two underground factions struggling for control while the mindless masses just want the whole thing to end? No, that’s not politically or culturally relevant at all.
The sad thing is, the end product, which everyone involved in should be immensely proud of, was not Romero’s original vision. His original was meant to be an epic – the zombie film to end them all. Various earlier scripts tell a vastly different story and his original script has yet to be found. What we do have is perhaps cluttered by too many characters, but the surviving ambition and various themes and elements of the original idea are present – the Zombies potentially learning, remembering, or getting smarter, and the idea of a police/military State. Lori Cardille is great as the lead, the intro is incredibly unnerving, and Joseph Pilato is fantastic as Capt. Rhodes. As much as the story and the warring factions are interesting, it’s the setting and the effects which are the star here – sloppy innards dropping off tables, legs being choked on, and my personal favourite – the quickfire dispatch of Rickles and Torrez – screaming, laughing faces being ripped apart and heads removed. I don’t think The Walking Dead has topped that one yet.
2. Night Of The Living Dead
It’s generally agreed that modern horror cinema started with 1960’s Psycho. Night Of The Living Dead took it to the next level, returning horror to it’s fantastical roots but blending it with the realism and suburban fears which Hitchcock’s masterpiece first portrayed. No longer could was it safe to trust the person next door, your friends, or even your family – and the less said about strangers, the government, and the military the better. Taking the traditionally mystical lore of zombies out of the textbooks and into the US heartland, these creatures were no longer slaves to some ritualistic high priest – instead they were mindless feeding machines, bent on a single course; to kill and eat the living. Our indecision, our inability to focus as a whole, or to follow a leader would be our downfall. Romero instills the blackest, and bleakest of humour in reminding us, or forewarning us, that this story absolutely will not have a happy ending – this is not a story where the hero wins.
If you haven’t seen the movie, then I’m not sure how you have stumbled upon this post. In any event, the film opens with a dreary, ominous uphill drive towards a ceremony as a modern-may-as-well-be-you brother and sister bicker and pay their respects. Within moments we have ‘they’re coming to get you, Barbara’, and the sudden ghoulish attack by a well dressed man. Barbara flees to an empty house, pursued by her attacker, where she meets Ben. Ben tells us that he too was attacked and we soon learn, thanks to docu-style news footage that the dead have come back to life and appear to be attacking the living. In other words – we’re fucked.
With an all amateur cast and crew, Romero deftly crafts one of the most claustrophobic and clever horror movies of all time, allowing the cast of recognizable characters and archetypes to show us their flaws in all their tragic glory, and in doing so single-handedly creates a sub-genre which still rules world-wide media today.
After Night comes Dawn. The success of Night allowed George to go make a variety of other movies in different genres and styles, but none had the same critical or commercial joy. Dawn was always supposed to be bigger – showing the wider devastation of the dead coming back. Romero wisely begins the movie by showing just how far the country has fallen since the events of Night. Even though we don’t know exactly how much time has passed, we get the impression that it isn’t very long – I think a few weeks is mentioned. Politicians, scientists, talking heads, ordinary people, the military, journalists – everyone has been focused on this one issue but still an agreed consensus cannot be reached. Mirroring the frustration and ineptitude at that global level is the unrest at a civil level. We meet a SWAT team tasked with investigating a social housing building where residents have refused to give up their dead. Of course, chaos and insanity is the order of the day, with gung-ho types, zombies, those who cannot deal with the fact that their loved ones are now monsters, and others who simply cannot deal with this new world. It’s claustrophobic, heated, exhausting, confusing, and brilliant. Two such soldiers team up – Roger and Peter and decide that it would be best to get out of the city while they still can. Luckily, Roger knows Stephen, a journalist and pilot who plans to steal a helicopter and get out with his girlfriend Francine. The four flee together.
The bulk of the movie takes place in a shopping mall, where the four survivors clear the place of the dead and enjoy the fruits of their labour – safety, food, and more shops and stuff than you could ever want. The satire on consumerism is well-documented, but the weird thing is that it still kind of makes you want to hide out in a mall if the world does go to shit. At least you’d be safe and entertained and fed for a while.The increased budget allows for a more talented cast and crew, more ideas, bigger scope – it’s an epic in every sense. Beyond the terrific, now dated, gore and make-up effects, the film still packs a punch with its scares – up front and subtle. It’s almost perfect in every way and even at well over 2 hours long it’s a film which I never want to end. I enjoy every second with these characters, I want to spend as long as possible with them, and it’s always depressing when the end comes. Romero doesn’t give us the all out bleak ending he originally devised, at least allowing for a chance that our survivors may live to fight another day. It’s one of the most influential and powerful horror movies ever made, it’s the best zombie movie of all time, and it’s one of a small number of films which has truly had a profound and lasting impact on me.
Let us know in the comments what your favourite George A Romero movies are!
EXT. A GRAVEYARD. DAY
RICK GRIMES: Lori, I just wanted to say… I’m sorry. I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you when all the zombies came, and now I’m here and you’re in this grave, dead.
CARL: Hi, dad. What you doing?
RICK GRIMES: Oh, hello son. I was just talking to your mother, and putting some flowers on her grave.
CARL: Uh, dad. What are you talking about? Mom’s not dead.
RICK GRIMES: Yes she is, remember? You were there.
CARL: No, that was some other lady. Look, mom’s over there.
RICK GRIMES: Huh? Where? Where!
CARL: Ha ha! Made you look!
EXT. PRISON. DAY
CARL: Look at the flowers, just look at the flowers!
SOPHIA: Why do you keep saying that?
CARL: Cos they’re so pretty. I mean, look at them!
SOPHIA: Carl, there aren’t very many others boys around anymore, and I was wondering. Would you like to be my boyfriend?
CARL: A pansy, a lovely tulip, and ooh look! A sweet pea! I think I’m going to sew this one into my one of a kind, Italian silk, moody, sunkist cravat. Sorry, what were you saying?
SOPHIA: Never mind.
INT. A SLAUGHTERHOUSE. DAY
A group of cannibals have tied up our heroes and are about to cut their throats.
GARETH: Any last words before, heh heh, dinner?
OLD MAN HERSHEL: Our father, who art in heaven…
GARETH: Oh please, ‘your God’ can’t help you now. Anyone else?
RED SHIRT: Please, I don’t want to die!
GARETH: How uninspiring – slice this guy’s throat already.
In a twelve minute scene, the Red Shirt is skinned alive, has his throat cut, is chopped into pieces, then Gareth dances the Macarena wearing Red Shirt’s skin.
RICK GRIMES: I promise I’m going to kill you.
GARETH: Oh really? If this guy’s God can’t kill me, how do you expect to?
A sudden THUNDERBOLT shoots from the SKY and torches GARETH and the other baddies. They are now dead.
OLD MAN HERSHEL: For ever and ever. Amen.
RICK GRIMES: Oh Lord, why hast thou forsaken me!
INT. AN ABANDONED WAREHOUSE. NIGHT
GLEN: So that’s the plan – I’ll sneak around the back and make a bit of a ruckus to distract the biters, then you come around from the other side and grab the big box of food, got it?
RICK GRIMES: Sure thing, skip. Lets – AGH! ARRGGH! Something’s biting me!
GLEN: It’s fine, your shirt just got caught on the sharp edge of a wooden crate
RICK GRIMES: No, I’ve been infected! Quick, hack off my arm before I become a zombie!
GLEN: No, you’re going to be – oh, alright then.
EXT. A FIELD INSIDE A PRISON. DAY
OLD MAN HERSHEL: Now listen up, everyone. The Lord has felt it necessary to wreak this plague upon us to shame us for our iniquities, but while we still live we need to prepare for the fut- Rick, what on Earth are you doing?
RICK GRIMES: Handstands.
OLD MAN HERSHEL: Han- why are you doing handstands? We’re having a serious discussion about farming, and irrigation, and such.
RICK GRIMES: Yeah I know but, handstands are much more fun. Look – weeeeee!
OLD MAN HERSHEL: Rick, that is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever – it does look kinda neat though. Let me try. Weeeeeee!
EXT. A CREEPY WOOD. DAY
RICK GRIMES: Sigh. Another awful day in the zombie apocalypse. I wonder if anything interesting will happen today
MICHONNE: Stop right there, white boy, befo I chop off yo head!
RICK GRIMES: Oh, hello. Pleasant day we’re having, isn’t it.
MICHONNE: Da fuq you talkin’ bout? Can’t you see I got this big ass sword and these two jawless biters tied to me?
RICK GRIMES: Yes ma’am, you said it! Another glorious day in the zombie apocalypse. (Singing) ‘Sunshine, lollipops, and – zombies – everything that’s do-bee-do-bee-la-dee-da-dee-bee together!
MICHONNE: Dis bitch be cray…
INT. A HOSPITAL WARD. DAY
RICK GRIMES (Waking up and yawning): Ahh, nothing like a nap to sooth those aching wounds. Wait a second, aching wounds? Where am I?
Shuffling sounds and moans come from outside the room
RICK GRIMES: Heh- hello? Is there anyone out there?
A zombie dressed in a police uniform shambles into the room
ZOMBIE SHANE: Rrrriiiiik!
RICK GRIMES: Oh no! It’s the Zombie Apocalypse!
ZOMBIE SHANE: Rrriiiiiik… iiwsssffffkkkknng Loorrrreeeeeee!
RICK GRIMES: What’s that? Little Coral is trapped down a well? Lets move!
*Note – at time of writing the show was in its mid season break. Now that I’m returning to the post the same season has finished and I’ve added a bonus paragraph!
Greeting, Glancers! It was inevitable, wasn’t it? My love of horror, apocalypse scenarios, TV, zombies – of course I was going to watch The Walking Dead, and of course I was going to love it. And of course I was going to include it in the Sh*t I Watch series. It should be noted though that I have not yet read the comics, though I hope to some day once they are cheap or someone gives me more money or an apocalypse comes and I can wander in to Forbidden Planet and take them free of charge. That’s what we all really want to see and dream about when we watch a show like this – the complete freedom to go and do as we please, no job, no responsibility, no future, our only care being how to survive.
Not Right
I won’t get into why this sort of thing is so cherished by people suffice to say that it has always been something I’ve fantasized about from an early age; all the usual questions – which weapon to use, where to live, how to travel, who to trust, what sort of person you should be – a lone warrior wading through the wasteland and killing zombies as you go, a trader who moves between settlements passing on information and supplies, part of an elite military or rescue group, hoard yourself with your family and only sneak outside when absolutely necessary, a peacemaker and builder who tries to bring society back from the brink? The possibilities are both endless and endlessly cliched, but it’s so easy to lose yourself in daydreams.
For my part, I don’t think the perfect zombie or apocalypse show has been made, though I love so many movies, books, and games which base themselves around similar ideas. I Am Legend and The Stand are my two favourite books of all time; Romero’s Dead trilogy are among my most loved movies of all time; since as far back as I can remember, the stories I have been most drawn to have involved some sort of survival against the odds, either a journey back to civilization, or the survival against its breakdown – all going back to when I first read The Odyssey in Primary School, along with all the other assorted heroic journey myths. I bought The Zombie Survival Guide the first day it was released, having had it pre-ordered for months. I wrote a draft script for my own TV series based around a zombie apocalypse years before The Walking Dead was developed. If I’m ever walking alone (which is most days) my thoughts invariably drift to questions like ‘how would I escape if I was surrounded in this street’ and ‘what would be the best way to travel to and from the city from here’. I have gone so far as printing out detailed Google Maps of the places I’ve lived and covered them in coloured lines to signify borders and barricades to build,filling them with notes on where the best place to live would be and how to divide survivors into teams to move from house to house, building to building, street to street taking out corpses and barricading the area to make it as safe as possible. In short, I am not right. What’s cool (and disturbing) though is how many people are the same. If friendly conversation in a group somehow turns to this topic, there is always, always at least one other person who is similarly intrigued by the whole thing and has spent hours obsessively pondering. Hopefully all this has set the scene for why, even though I sometimes scream at the TV for how boring and repetitive The Walking Dead can be, I wholehearted love it and forgive its flaws.
Swallowed Whole
If you somehow don’t know, The Walking Dead follows a group (or groups) of survivors in a world where society has collapsed due to a zombie outbreak. In grand zombie tradition the reasons for the outbreak are never explained and our lead character, Rick, missed most of the initial carnage. Waking in a hospital days after the world has essentially ended, a la The Day Of The Triffids, 28 Days Later, The Stand, etc etc, Rick seems to be the last person alive surrounded by flesh eating ‘Walkers’. Over time we find out that plenty of people have survived, including Rick’s family, friends, and other assorted goodies and baddies. Each series sees new characters introduced, old characters slaughtered, and plenty of human drama offset by scares, action, and horrific and delicious violence. Where The Walking Dead scores more highly over other recent shows that I watch is that it makes me care about the characters – I love some, I despise others, and the ones I am ambivalent about usually don’t last more than a few episodes. The characters feel real and you can understand the actions 0f even the most crazed or most evil, though there have been plenty of moments where you are confident that a certain character would never behave in a certain way based on what we have previously been shown. There isn’t a lot of humour, and in recent seasons the atmosphere has become almost unrelentingly bleak and tense as beloved characters are killed off with or without warning, and every glimmer of hope is swallowed whole.
There’s a valid argument that this show and other fiction like it fails to take into account that most humans are essentially good, want to survive, and understand instinctively that to survive we need to live in packs and work together towards a common goal. Too often in this sort of show are there people only looking out for themselves and who will terrorize and murder everyone in sight if they don’t bend the knee or simply get in their way. Whether or not this would happen in reality is hard to say – history has shown that we’ve only got to where we are today by forming societies and ensuring that those things which harm the group are punished, those things which prevent us from losing our humanity are cast out. But of course, the most interesting characters are always the outcasts, rebels, and misfits and there wouldn’t be much drama if we focused solely on rebuilding and avoiding the dead – we’re only happy when we’re filled with dread or grief. In The Walking Dead there are moments which show how our main characters wrestle with the notion of humanity, frequently turning into animals themselves to survive or get what they want. Several have come close to ‘stepping over the edge’ and therefore losing their humanity. The problem may be that each series there is a bad guy or bad element for dramatic purposes who rarely crosses the line into humanity – we know they are evil from the moment we see them and that there is no hope for them. To the show’s credit, it recognizes this fact and does its damnedest to try to make these bad guys more human, but as a smart audience we understand that the twain cannot meet, and that TV demands our characters to remain stalwart and true against the baddies.
Throwaway Evil
I can’t speak for what Negan is like at this point, but lets look at the ‘big bads’ we’ve had so far. We’ve had Merle – essentially a psychopath, lines blurred by the fact that he is the brother of another character, Darryl. We’ve had Shane – Rick’s best friend and the man who basically takes over looking after Rick’s family. As the series progress he feels like he is losing control and influence within the group and wants Lori (Rick’s wife) for himself, eventually resorting to cowardice and malice and murder. We’ve had The Governor, a self-placed leader of a successful community who seems like a saviour on the surface, but is ruthless underneath – there are few real attempts at blurring the lines with him until a few brief moments after the collapse of Woodbury where it seems he could be human after all, but these don’t last long. We’ve had The Claimers – roving bandits whose loose set of rules is that whoever ‘claims’ something gets to keep it – throwaway evil. We had the people from Terminus – inviting survivors to an idyllic place only to execute and eat them, again they seem nice on the surface but are killers underneath with little attempt to blur the lines. The best and most frustrating attempt to blur this line is with the Policewoman Dawn, who rules Grady Memorial hospital. She genuinely wants to build a better world, but she allows her need for control get the better of her – she believes in upholding the law, but allows her men to rape and steal and hurt, she essentially turns the hospital into a prison demanding the most useful people to stay and help. She is shown to have good intentions but is also shown to be too cold and doesn’t get the character development needed to make us question whether the things she did were for the benefit of society or not. After she is dispatched, a large group of survivors decide to continue what she planned, but supposedly without resorting to inhuman activity – I wonder if we’ll see them again.
(Update since mid-Season: Season 6 to me had a major focus on this blurring of good and evil, with Rick and the gang frequently being seen by others as being the bad guys, or recklessly dangerous to the point that us the viewers will have been hard pressed to disagree with such notions. There is not simply a sense of performing awful acts to survive, but rather that they are going out of their way to kill because there might be a threat. They have become so deluded by their own confidence that when Negan finally makes his appearance in the final moments, his group has toyed so easily with Rick’s group as to make them seem like amateurs struggling within an ever-tightening noose.)
There are plenty of other examples of more minor bad guys (again notably the Doctor at Grady who seems like a good person but is killing certain patients for his own survival) and those who are simply canon fodder. But enough talk of such things, lets talk about what we really care about – guns, swords, and gore!
We may stay for the drama, but we came for the blood. The Walking Dead raised the bar for depictions of violence on TV and has superb effects throughout thanks to genre legend Greg Nicotero and his crew of wizards. There is so much work and love put into the practical effects, the make up, and even the CG, that it is a joy for gore fiends like me. Even the most static episode will have an obligatory chunk bitten from an arm or headshot etc, but we go truly overboard with all manner of kills, injuries, and gruesome creatures on various states of rot. The sets and locations are suitably barren and reflect an America sickened and on its knees, however I am getting a little tired of the same scenery over and over – those leaf strewn roads and those same forests. I’d love a little more variety, and that’s why I’d love further spin offs showing survivors from around America, from around the world – beach zombies, mountain zombies, a last stand around Chichen Itza, tribes or roaming survivors in Africa, Australia, all keeping away from the cities – and of course why not some cities themselves – a group of scared politicians or officials holed up in suburbia, or a bunker, or in a palace or millionaire’s mansion? I haven’t watched any of the spin-off show Fear The Walking Dead yet, but I understand it takes place in another US city and deals more with the lead up to and immediate aftermath of the outbreak. All I’m saying is that there is still room for other ideas and people and places before it all becomes too saturated and silly.
While the dialogue is peppered with inspirational speeches it’s not exactly the most quote-worthy show. There is a lot of introspection and there are a lot of arguments. Nevertheless, the show is well written and packs in plenty of surprises and shocks, though it’s clear those are on the wane. There isn’t a lot of humour and there isn’t a lot of love – when there is it usually doesn’t last. The show follows in the tradition of Buffy and Game Of Thrones by placing a lot of its ability to scare the viewer into us knowing that any character can be killed off at any time. There have been some rumblings recently though that the show has lost its bite and is now too scared to kill off one of the key players – a Rick, a Darryl for example. We’ve seen several main characters apparently be killed only for them to be miraculously resurrected which has pissed off quite a few people. The show does still have a high death count, not just bad guys and zombies, but recurring cast members. If you make it through a couple of Seasons as an actor you’re bound to feel both lucky and wary that your days are numbered. We know someone from the main group died at Negan’s hands in the Season 6 finale, but we don’t know who. There are plenty of disposable characters, but we all have our favourites. My main issue at the moment is that the format does seem to be running thin – survivors find a new place to hide and live, a new human threat emerges, the threat must be overcome, usually at the expense of the place they were living and a few new characters. Rinse and repeat. I was excited by the prospect of the road trip to DC as that gave the show a different direction, a different endgame and purpose, but it fizzled out. We know the show will have to end some time, and I’m not advocating some pleasant answer where a cure is found and they all live happily ever after. I do think there needs to be an ending though, before the masses lose interest and they wrap it up in a lazy way. I’d be happy watching forever of course, guns and gore and zombies and I’ll watch. Even if it’s Zombie Nation, and that show is balls.
But I’ve rambled on long enough. I need to go check the barricades and make sure the surrounding streets are clear before it gets dark. Because they mostly come out at night. Mostly. Let us know your thoughts on The Walking Dead in the comments section – your favourite character, kill, and of course what you would do if, nay, when the zombies come.
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