AGE FRIGHT

Playing at 8 p.m. Saturday, June 5 and 8 p.m. Sunday, June 6 only at Alamo Drafthouse Cinema Chandler; streams starting June 8 on Shudder: 

The Amusement Park--Scary movie buffs around the world revere the name of George A. Romero, the Pittsburgh-based auteur who directed the original 1968 Night of the Living Dead and its 1978 sequel Dawn of the Dead, two of the more influential horror pictures ever. So the release of a "lost" movie by Romero is no little thing. But moviegoers will have their chance to see just that at Alamo Drafthouse Cinema Chandler this weekend: Romero's 53-minute opus The Amusement Park, made in 1973 but shelved and thought lost until a print was discovered and restored a few years ago.

Romero's widow has been quoted as calling it his "most terrifying film." Having seen it, I'm not sure she's wrong, although it's not, in the usual sense of the term, a horror movie. It's an "industrial" that Romero made for hire for the Lutheran Society, a social service agency for the aged, about a terrifying subject: Aging and ageism. But it is atmospheric and haunting, even shocking at times, to the extent that the Lutheran Society declined to use it.

The star is Lincoln Maazel, who later played the elderly vampire killer in Romero's 1978 chiller Martin (and was also the real-life father of conductor Lorin Maazel). Here he's a sweet old guy in a white suit wandering around a rather seedy-looking old-school amusement park. But this is an allegorical amusement park: The rides and other attractions depict the economic, racial, medical and other abuses and humiliations suffered by the elderly.

The quality of The Amusement Park is bleakly dreamlike. There are some touches that have an unfortunate student-film quality, but they don't lessen the overall emotional impact. As the poor man's miseries and torments increase, culminating in a scene involving him trying to read The Three Little Pigs to a child, Maazel's performance becomes heartbreaking.

Maazel also appears, out of character, in a prologue in which he notes that the other elderly people in the film were from area homes, and their time at the park, working on the film, was the first fun outing that some of them had had in years. He addresses us again in an epilogue, asking us to consider volunteering for services helping seniors.

The setting, by the way, was West View Park, near Pittsburgh; Romero's film is also a vivid time capsule for the attraction. I grew up in western Pennsylvania, and while I don't remember ever visiting this particular park, the movie quickly brought back the nostalgic sense memories of parks of that sort, and that period. It was founded in 1906, and closed in 1977, just four years after the film was made. Turns out it was a victim of aging, too.

STIFF COMPETITION

Check out my review, on Phoenix Magazine online, of The Dead Don't Die, the funny but ultimately disappointing zombie movie by Jim Jarmusch...

...along with my reviews of the new Shaft, and the documentaries The Spy Behind Home Plate and Echo in the Canyon.

The Jarmusch movie has me thinking about the cannibal ghoul genre that became so ubiquitous in the last couple of decades that it seemed in danger of chasing away other forms of horror picture. It's taken over TV too, of course, and it hasn't stopped there; a few years ago Mesa Community College hosted a symposium about economics during a zombie apocalypse.

Anyway, I started trying to formulate a top-ten best zombie pictures list, and initially I found it hard to fill out. As compelling as zombie pictures can be at their best, the vast majority of them are unimaginative, unpleasant, low-rent junk. But finally I was able to come up with ten titles that I could wholeheartedly endorse, plus a couple of honorable mentions. See what you think:

Maggie (2015)--Arnold Schwarzenegger plays a farmer whose daughter Abigail Breslin is turning into a zombie. This well-acted movie is a reproach to the idea that a plague like this would anarchic and fun.

Dead Alive (1992)--This early Peter Jackson splatter-fest is a gruesome riot, plus it includes a stop-motion "Sumatran rat monkey."

Day of the Dead (1985)--The third of George Romero's Night of the Living Dead series, set mostly in an underground military-scientific research station, is pretty memorable, between the splenetic performance of Joseph Pilato as the wound-up commanding officer and Howard Sherman as the reflective zombie "Bub."

Zombieland (2009)--Woody Harrelson, Emma Stone, Jesse Eisenberg and Abigail Breslin wander a zombie-ridden America. Over the course of the film Eisenberg enumerates the many rules for survival in a zombie plague; rule number one is simple, and probably wise under any circumstance: "Cardio." Also, as with The Dead Don't Die, Bill Murray's in it.

Shaun of the Dead (2004)--The first and best entry in Simon Pegg, Nick Frost and Edgar Wright's so-called "Cornetto Trilogy" was both the best English comedy and the second-best zombie picture of its year. It was genuinely funny, and by the end, surprisingly emotional.

Shock Waves (1977)--There are zombies, and then there are underwater Nazi zombies. Shipwrecked tourists meet the great Peter Cushing as an SS officer, living on a deserted resort on a tropical island; he's custodian to the remnant of the Totenkorps, undead Nazi soldiers adapted for environments inhospitable to the living (like the bottom of the ocean). Brooke Adams, Luke Halpin and John Carradine are also in this creepy low-budgeter from director Ken Wiederhorn. The shots of the Nazombies rising from the waves are freaky.

Dawn of the Dead (2004)--In Zack Snyder's reboot of George Romero's zombies-at-the-mall classic, the zombies run instead of slowly plod. I'm an old-school zombie purist, but there's no denying that Snyder's movie is exciting, genuinely scary, and possessed of a fine sick sense of humor.

Dawn of the Dead (1978)--Zombies overrun the lower levels of the Monroeville Mall near Pittsburgh; survivors commandeer the upper decks. Directed by George Romero with gore effects by Tom Savini, this is one of the movies that defined the zombie genre, among many memorable moments is the notorious downsizing of the "Helicopter Zombie" (Jim Krut).

Return of the Living Dead (1985)--Dan O'Bannon's "meta" send-up of the Romero classic, in which the zombies are verbal and specifically crave "braaaaaains!" is chilling and hilarious, with performances by veterans Clu Gulager, Don Calfa and James Karen that are not only lovable but truly touching.

Night of the Living Dead (1968)--Nothing especially imaginative or controversial about my number-one choice. The first of its kind remains, as far as I'm concerned, the best of its kind; George Romero's low-budget black-and-white zombie yarn gets the nod not only for its skillful, suspenseful film-making but for its nightmarish yet convincing atmosphere.

Honorable mentions include World War Z, that almost gore-free epic starring Brad Pitt that you could nearly take your Grandma to, zombie rom-coms like Life After Beth and Warm Bodies, and the literary zombie mash-up Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. I'll also admit to a soft spot for the six Resident Evil pictures, though that may have more to do with my deep feelings for heroine Milla Jovavich.

BY GEORGE

When you think of the great Georges in American history, obviously you start with George Washington, and move on to George Washington Carver and George S. Patton and George Gershwin, and then maybe George Cukor and George McGovern and George Takei...

But really, for horror movie geeks, the next full stop after The Father of Our Country is George A. Romero.

RIP to Romero, who directed the standard, and still the best, cannibal zombie movie, 1968's Night of the Living Dead, and its sequels starting with Dawn of the Dead, and other fascinating, morally complex horror pictures like The Crazies and Season of the Witch and Martin, and who joined the legions of the dead himself last weekend, too young at 77.

RIP, while we're at it, to the brilliant Martin Landau, departed at 89, whose long, varied career reached its pinnacle with his beautiful, hilarious, moving incarnation of the elderly Bela Lugosi in Tim Burton's Ed Wood (1994), for which he won an Oscar. RIP also to the lovable Canadian actor Harvey Atkin, probably best known as the hapless Morty in Meatballs, and as a judge in many episodes of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, passed on at 74.

This week...

Monster-of-the-Week: ...in tribute to Romero, our honoree is Fluffy, the monster in the crate...

 ...in 1982's Creepshow, Romero's jolly collaboration with Stephen King in evoking the spirit of E.C.-style horror comics. Here's Fluffy as rendered by the late great Berni Wrightson in his comic adaptation of the flick...

BILLY/JACK

RIP to a couple of big names in the macabre: William “Chilly Billy” Cardille, passed on at 87, and Jack Davis, passed on at 91.

Chilly Billy was the revered host of Chiller Theatre on Pittsburgh’s WIIC/WPXI, and played the reporter in the final minutes of the original Night of the Living Dead.

 He also hosted a kid show, Tip-Top Merry-Go-Round, on WICU in my beloved hometown of Erie, PA.

Davis, of course, was the legendary EC Comics and MAD Magazine artist who drew, among many, many other credits… 

Monster-of-the-Week: …this week’s honoree, the magnificent “Giant Life Size Frankenstein Pin-Up” (OVER 6 FEET TALL!), available in the pages of Famous Monsters of Filmland for a mere two bucks…

I checked eBay; he sells for a lot more now…

STALL TALE

A friend recently mentioned to me that the writing on the walls of the lavatory stalls at his workplace had grown disappointingly barren, both in volume & in its invention & wit. A possible explanation struck me at once: competition. After all, isn’t the bathroom stall the original—& less censorious—Facebook?

RIP to Bill Hinzman, the zombie shuffling through the cemetery at the very beginning of the original 1968 Night of the Living Dead, passed on at 75—he was Zombie Zero in the movies. He was also on the camera crew of that film, & he went on to appear in and/or work on several other George A. Romero productions & eventually became a low-budget horror auteur himself. But his true cinematic legacy is as the face—the lean, hungry, haunted face—of a new franchise, & a new genre.

RIP also to the commanding Ben Gazzara, departed at 81, & to Zalman King, at 70. King’s career was fascinating: After a period as an offbeat leading man—he starred in the TV series The Young Lawyers, played Jesus in the film version of Hugh Schonfield’s The Passover Plot, & was the hero of the strange 1978 thriller Blue Sunshine—King found his real niche writing, producing & directing glossy erotica. He wore one or more of those hats for such familiar lonely-guy late-night premium-cable favorites as Two Moon Junction, Wild Orchid, 9 ½ Weeks & The Red Shoe Diaries.

MAID MAN

Playing through Thursday at the Harkins Shea 14 in Scottsdale is The Women on the 6th Floor (Les Femmes du 6eme Etage), Philippe le Guay’s mild social comedy about a persnickety stockbroker (Fabrice Luchini) who bonds with his ravishing, unflappable new maid (Natalia Verbeke), & through her with the other Spanish domestics in the servants quarters in his building in early ‘60s Paris.

It’s a sweet, sly spin on class relations, well worth seeing for the deeply funny performances of every member of the cast. Along with Luchini & the breathtaking Verbeke, I especially liked Lola Duenas as the Communist maid, smiling with unoffended incredulity at everyone’s naïvete. Lord knows what this character would have to say, however, about this sentimental tale, which seems to hinge on the same “enormous platitude” that Orwell ascribes to Dickens: “If men would behave decently the world would be decent.”

My brother made me aware of this story, about the chapel in the cemetery near Evans City, Pennsylvania that appears at the beginning of Night of the Living Dead, & of a fundraising attempt to save it. You can donate here, & here is a New Times story I wrote about a peculiar experience I had at that cemetery.

RIP to the truly hilarious Alan Sues of Laugh-In, passed on at 85, & to the truly hilarious Patrice O’Neal, passed on at just 41.