Re: Best film directed by George A. Romero.
 

I agree. Day of the Dead.

Re: Best film directed by George A. Romero.
 

Day of the Dead could have been great if Romero got the budget he wanted and didn't have to throw out half the script.

Re: Best film directed by George A. Romero.
 

I didn't vote for it, but I'm glad to see "Knightriders" get a little love. It's an excellent movie which doesn't seem to get its due since its not even remotely a horror movie.

Best George A. Romero Movies Ranked
 

Hi All,

This might fluctuate a bit, as I'm in the process of watching the rest of the Romero movies I own (including Season of the Witch and There's Always Vanilla), but here's the list thus far...

1. Dawn of the Dead - The best zombie movie of all-time. Very topical and socially driven, and yet Romero still claims that wasn't his aim. His aim was just to make a solid movie. Great follow-up to Night, but even better, in my mind. Love all of the actors and only an idiot would claim that having an entire mall all to yourself would not be desirable. The ultimate dream...Some scenes seem dated (like the gun shop in the mall...but this the US we're talking about)...Just a great movie...And Savini really set the bar with the gore effects...Love it...

2. Day of the Dead - Very underrated and unfairly maligned, in my mind. This is a great movie. As I mentioned in a previous post, Romero had to cut the budget significantly prior to filming, and yet he still made a masterful movie. The acting is over the top, but it really fits in with what he was trying to accomplish. I personally love the set in the mine...and I think the acting was perfect for what he was trying to do. A classic...

3. Night of the Living Dead - The benchmark. Great movie. What he was able to build with the rest of the series. Some of it comes across as cheesy, as does most stuff from this era, but ultimately a fantastic movie. Brought zombies back to the forefront...

4. The Crazies - Without calling them zombies, this is still kind of a zombie pic. A bunch of residents are overcome with some sort of virus...A lot of parallels with Night of the Living Dead...Good movie...Lots of eerie scenes...

5. Monkey Shines - Surprisingly good. A paraplegic enlists a trained monkey to help him deal with his disabilities...Great acting...Great cinematography...Good score...Really surprised how good this was...

6. The Dark Half - Slightly lesser Romero. Based on a Stephen King book. It's still good, but some of the effects are pretty dated. Timothy Hutton was really good, even though in the special features they make sure to say that he was kind of a pain in the ass to work with. I enjoyed it, but wouldn't necessarily recommend it to friends...

7. Land of the Dead - Disappointing if only because it was Romero's long-heralded return to the zombie genre. The subtext was a little too on the nose and I didn't like how much the zombies could learn...In Day of the Dead, Bub was handled very well and it was believable that he could learn what he did...In this one, I though Romero took it too far and tried to make us convinced that zombies could essentially be intelligent...Dennis Hopper was fun though...

8. Diary of the Dead - Another let-down. Didn't like it. It had it's moments, but on such a limited budget you could tell Romero more or less lost his touch...

9. Knightriders - Horrible. Hated this movie. Two and a half hours of garbage, in my mind, but I still sat through it cause I'm a Romero fan...Surprised this still has the odd fan...

Thanks

Still haven't seen some of his later "Dead" Movies, but these are what I've seen so far...

Re: Best George A. Romero Movies Ranked
 

1. Dawn of the Dead
2. Night of the Living Dead
3. Martin
4. Day of the Dead
5. The Crazies

Re: Best George A. Romero Movies Ranked
 

1. Dawn
2. Night
3. (A distant third) Day

The remake of The Crazies was better.

His other ...of the Dead movies are varying degrees of bad.

Re: Best George A. Romero Movies Ranked
 

1. Night of the Living Dead
2. Dawn of the Dead
3. Martin
4. Diary of the Dead
5. Creepshow
6. Two Evil Eyes (well, half of it anyway)
7. Monkey Shines
8. Day of the Dead
9. Land of the Dead
10. Survival of the Dead

I've seen but don't remember much about Season of the Witch, and I've never made it all the way through Knightriders. I haven't seen any of the others.

Every time that I watch Day of the Dead, I like it less than the time before. I've come to really despise that film, and not just because it introduced the concept of the sympathetic zombie (although that is a major component in my dislike of it).

Re: Best George A. Romero Movies Ranked
 

For his zombie movies, this is how I rank them too. NotLD is one of the true landmark horror movies. But Dawn is just so epic that I rate it higher. Helping the matter is that Dawn was one of the first horror movies I remember seeing at the theater (I didn't get around to seeing NotLD until years later on VHS). I'm not sure what my parents were thinking, but they took me (a grade schooler at the time) to see it at a drive-in. Other horror movies I remember from the drive-in days were It's Alive, Tales from the Crypt, The Amityville Horror, and Alien. But Dawn stuck with me the most. It probably didn't help my nightmares that I lived near places where Dawn took place.

I found Land ok, but thought Diary was dreadful. Never bothered watching Survival.

Creepshow is probably my favorite non-zombie Romero movie. I wonder if no one mentioned it so far because they forgot it was a Romero movie (understandable since Stephen King is the creative "name" that is more closely associated with it). Martin and The Crazies are others that I've enjoyed. Money Shines and The Dark Half were alright. I saw Bruiser yet remember nothing about it.

I guess I'm one of those people with horrible taste that liked Knightriders. ;) Though it's been ages since I've seen it last so maybe it hasn't aged so well. I do know that you have to go into it expecting nothing like any other Romero movie (like Fast Company with Cronenberg).

Approach Season of the Witch and There's Always Vanilla with caution. Especially the latter, which even Romero thought sucked.

Re: Best George A. Romero Movies Ranked
 

I rewatched Knightriders just recently (Christmas). It's still as good as it ever was. I think it's his second best film after Dawn. Romero thinks it's his second best after Martin. It's definitely an either you get it or you don't movie.
Probably depends how much the viewer can identify with the themes of the movie. The movie is not about motorcycles if that's what you're looking for.

A couple years before Knightriders a movie was released called Big Wednesday. It is almost the exact same movie. It starred William Katt, Gary Busey and Jan-Michael Vincent as surfers. The movie explores the exact same themes as Knightriders only in a more commercial, superficial way. Knightriders digs deeper.

If interested. Track down Big Wednesday and watch it first. Then watch Knightriders.

It's understandable that younger audiences may not relate as well to Knightriders. It's about non-conformists fighting social pressure to fit into some mold that society expects of them. The movie was made at a time when society still frowned upon adults reading comic books. As time goes by these pressures have eased and people are more free to be who they want to be without being branded a weirdo.

Re: Best George A. Romero Movies Ranked
 

I love Big Wednesday and have always been a Milius fan. That movie is terrific. Gary Busey is hilarious in that as the "masochist"...

Re: Best George A. Romero Movies Ranked
 

Decided to see it tonight after reading your thread. Fun movie and quite interesting. But I didn't find any of the zombies scary compared to Night of the living dead which I find the mood much scarier. Dawn of the dead is just fun silly action all around.

Re: Best George A. Romero Movies Ranked
 

Don't forget Martin (1978). Not sure where I would put this when ranking all of Romero's films, but I find it an excellent & underrated horror flick. Liked the late '70's Pittsburgh setting & the extremely disturbing storyline.

I don't know which was worse - that Martin himself believed he was a vampire, or that his uncle also believed & encouraged this.

Re: Best George A. Romero Movies Ranked
 

:up:

Re: Best George A. Romero Movies Ranked
 

Is there a continuation after Dawn of the dead? Or any other Romero film that makes mention of it in another movie?

Re: Best George A. Romero Movies Ranked
 

Although I don't know if I agree with this interpretation of Martin. I also do not disagree with it. The ambiguity is easily the movie's strength. I've always kind of thought that it's saying vampirism is real, it's just not how it's depicted in movies. Something Martin says very often in the film. It's more of a disease, and it's genetic. Cuda knows this, and knows Martin is afflicted with it. Is Martin really a vampire, or just a sick boy? We'll never know...

It's indeed fun, but it's a better film than Night, and also scarier the more you dissect it. Even if, like you say, the zombies are seemingly comic relief instead of a malevolent force.

Night of the Living Dead is just that; a period, from dusk till dawn, about an attack by the living Dead. But Dawn of the Dead is not as literal with the title. It is obviously not about one early morning of zombies. The movie takes place over several weeks, perhaps even several months. And it is indeed a "dawn", but more in the sense of a dawning of a new era: the era of the dead. The scare factor lies in the fact that zombies are here to stay, and will ultimately rule the earth, as laughable as the zombies in this film seem to be. The characters in the film are mostly oblivious to this (and I do mean all characters, not just the four who most of the film centers upon. I mean everyone, like both the police and the residents of the tenement in the beginning, the people in the TV station, the hicks using the zombies as target practice, and ultimately the bikers at the end). Only a few times do you see those who truly understand what's happening. The one-legged priest at the beginning is one of the few who's aware of the gravity of the situation. Also when Steven asks "What ARE they?", Fran grimly replies "They're us". It's not just a statement of the fact that the zombies are re-animated dead humans, but really a reflection of what humankind has become.

And it's a small bit, but I do get chills of the scene early on, as the helicopter featuring the main characters takes off, and you see the tall building in the background as the lights go out. I always wonder just what it is that causes those lights to go out, and it's damn creepy.

Re: Best George A. Romero Movies Ranked
 

:thumbsup:

Re: Best George A. Romero Movies Ranked
 

What makes Dawn scarier is the feeling of hopelessness. There's no place to go. There's no rescue. The nightmare has become reality. At the very beginning we see the female character wake up from sleep. Her reaction is that she's waking up to the nightmare. Sleep was the escape.

Night is scary in that it's in creepy black and white, in a creepy farmhouse, with an even creepier basement. But the horror is contained to a single location and time period. The feeling is that the rest of the world is still ok and there is help out there. All you have to do is make it through the night, or make it to the truck and you're scott free.

Re: Best George A. Romero Movies Ranked
 

For me, Night of the Living Dead is an all-time classic, and better by far than the rest of his work.

Re: Best George A. Romero Movies Ranked
 

:up:

Another :up:

Re: Best George A. Romero Movies Ranked
 

Here are some reviews I posted last year (on another site) reviewing two other underrated & somewhat obscure GAR films:

Bruiser (2000): This is a great horror/revenge flick; well-done film about a guy who lets everyone walks all over him - until he decides to strike back. Too bad that more haven't seen this, since it is an above-average film.

Day of the Dead (1985). Great "final" film in Romero's initial zombie trilogy.

-This was an interesting story - and was more post-apocalyptic than NOTLD or Dawn of the Dead, due to presumably taking place longer after the "zombie apocalypse". I liked the scenes of the burned-out cities, which were almost deserted - other than the zombies walking around.

The idea of a small group of uninfected survivors living in an underground bunker was intriguing, especially considering that there was a lot of tension between the different groups.

-Also, AFAIK this is one of the first (and only) zombie films that implied that the zombies had the capability to "become" intelligent again, re: the mad doctor's experiments with the "Bub" zombie;

(IIRC, in TWD TV series there was a sequence where a scientist working for "The General" was doing experiments on zombies by trying to determine they remembered anything from their previous "lives". However, on this show, it was determined that they didn't remember anything, but were mindless monsters. IMHO, this whole sequence was an homage to the "Bud" zombie from DOTD).

-The zombie make-up "effects" were definitely more sophisticated & grotesque than what we saw in Dawn of the Dead; obviously, they got progressively better with each subsequent film.

-There was an open question

In any case, the final

Re: Best George A. Romero Movies Ranked
 

Yeah, I really want to check out that movie...I've heard of it, but have been waiting for a decent release...Same thing with Martin...Those are the two Romero movies I really want to watch...

I still need to finish watching There's Always Vanilla and Season of the Witch...but I've found them excruciatingly boring the past couple of times I've tried to sit through them...

Re: Best George A. Romero Movies Ranked
 

I saw both of those on a double-DVD set back in the 200X's. They were both OK, but definitely not typical Romero. I liked them because the '70's is my favorite decade for cinema, but I think they're probably my least favorite Romero films.

Re: Best George A. Romero Movies Ranked
 

Wow. I'd never really considered that angle. "Waking up to the nightmare". Very creepy when you think about it.

Re: Best film directed by George A. Romero.
 

I forgot about this poll but I voted then as I would still vote now for Dawn of the Dead. It's like the best example of why Romero has such a strong fandom.

Night of the Living Dead is a more important film in spawning a genre, but it has a lot of flaws as a movie with inconsistent pacing and acting and being a bit too low-budget that just stand out more and more with repeated viewings.

I even have the heretical opinion that the 1990 remake is better than the original Night of the Living Dead. I think it's an excellent example of how to make a good remake (something that seems to be hard for most filmmakers to pull off for some reason). I think the 1990 version is so well done that I think someone who sees it first will probably be very disappointed by the original once they eventually see it.

Re: Best George A. Romero Movies Ranked
 

I found There's Always Vanilla crap, but Season of the Witch was interesting, if unsuccessful. It's kind of Romero's take on Bergman, mixed with Altman's Images. There are those endless inane conversations, true, but there are also many striking visuals and aurals, and the flash-scares involving the main character's visions of a masked intruder breaking into the house are, I think, easily the scariest scenes in Romero's repertoire.