One of my favourite sub genres in horror is rape and revenge. There's just something so inspiring watching a chick who was previously a victim, kick the shit out of the men that assaulted her. Among this sub genre, you'll find classics like;I Spit on your Grave, Last House on the Left, Thriller: A Cruel Picture, Ms. 45 and I'll Never Die Alone. These excellent movies for the most part follow a simple formula. We follow a likable protagonist who gets fucked over. We then watch her fuck everyone else over. Must contain a harrowing rape scene and a fucked up revenge scene. That's what these movies are all about, right? A simple formula. So how did They All Must Die! manage to fuck it up?!
Directed by Sean Weathers, a man I know nothing about, They All Must Die! plays like a black version of I Spit on your Grave. Literally, it's essentially the same exact movie, only our rapists are from the ghetto, and it's set in New York City. Oh and our protagonist is a bitch. So already, you can see this movie isn't really setting itself up right. We're supposed to like the victim, that's why we feel bad when she gets raped, and we cheer when she grows some balls. But this chick is just unlikeable. So full of herself. It's hard to sympathise with someone like looks like this.
Not the most flattering picture of her, but still much more flattering then the cover. She's come all the way to New York to write a novel about black guys, or something. And gets annoyed when black guys hit on her. Which one does almost immediately. Cue our would be rapists.
Now these three losers see her move in and right off the bat, two of them just yell shit at her. Not trying to win her affections or anything, just trying to sound as 'gangsta' as possible. Saying stuff like;
"Yo........snowflake! If you aint ever been to the ghetto.......don't ever come to the ghetto. Cos...you wouldn't even understand the ghetto! So stay the fuck out of the ghetto!"
Oh. Are you guys in the ghetto? I'm glad you mentioned it, cos I wouldn't have noticed. Especially since it just looks like a regular street in New York City. And it's just the three of you losers and no one else. Yeah, they seem like real thugs alright. One looks like a 14 year old kid, who proclaims he's a virgin, and would rather be one than "eat pussy". Whatever the hell that means.
We got one that's skinny and who's too chicken shit to actually have sex with the chick, given the chance. And we got the big one, who runs over to her and flirts with her immediately. The big one actually does a pretty decent job at trying to win her affections in being friendly and welcoming. But remember, our chick is a bitch, so she'll reject him, more than once, after all, she's only here to write a book called "America through the Eyes of a Black Man". And who better knows America through the eyes of a black man, then a single white chick!
Well, after half the movie of trying to win over her affections and failing, the boys decide to actually act like thugs, and invade her house and rape her. And truth be told, it's the only good part of the whole movie. Lasting for about 20 mins, it's pretty damn uncomfortable and cringeworthy. But kinda annoying after a while too, both hearing our victim screaming a lot, and hearing the rapists talk shit the entire time and trying to sound tough. It would have been more effective if you actually liked the main girl. Oh well.
Unfortunately, the rape scene seems to be the only reason to see this movie. Everything leading up to it is boring and repetitive, and the revenge scenes after leave much to be desired. For a rape revenge film, there was shockingly little violence, and no gore. I find that very disappointing. The movie has the words BANNED on the cover, and there's no gore? Impossible! This whole movie is a tease!
Speaking of the cover, it's chock full of warnings and declaimers. Of course it is. The only thing offensive about this movie is the rape scene, but even that goes for too long and becomes almost boring at a point. This movie has heart, and wants to be as disturbing as possible. But it's far too obnoxious. While the rape scene tries to be disturbing, what's more offensive is the blatant splicing in of random lynching photos. I have no idea why these images are spliced in, but watch it for long enough and you'll noticed these images popping up for a mini second.
There's no musical score in this, much like I Spit on your Grave. But where I Spit had the peaceful tranquillity of nature and scenery, this movie has NYC. And bad actors pretending they're thugs. This movie plays out like some horror fans got a camera and asked their friends to improvise a movie. That's how low budget it is. So for the most part, it's a very decent effort. And pretty offensive and racist enough to raise some eyebrows. But too boring and obnoxious to be anything special.
4/10
Thanks for reading.
#Extreme #Rape #Revenge
Franck Khalfoun's Maniac (2012) is a remake of the 1980 movie of the same name. Taking place in Los Angeles this time, the overall plot is still very much the same. Socially awkward Frank Zito (Elijah Wood) stalks women, taking his victims' scalps to attach to his mannequins, sending fear throughout the city. Some of the women he stalks are charmed by his somewhat shy behavior. Others are fucking terrified as he follows them, making his intentions of harming them very well known.
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John Wick (2014), starring Keanu Reeves as a the titular character, grieving his late wife. Before her death, however, she left him a lovely little puppy as a parting gift, which he quickly grew to love. However, home invasion and robbery result in a second loss for poor John Wick. This time, he wants some good old-fashioned revenge. Against the mafia.
So I watched this movie again the other night. But it felt like for the first because Scorpion released it to Blu-ray restored. Before it was dark and I could hardly make anything out. To All a Goodnight(1980) is a typical Christmas slasher. It's directed by David Hess of all people, but there isn't any rape scenes in this slasher.
For two decades after Day of the Dead, George Romero didn't do any new movies with zombies. I'm not sure if that was because Day of the Dead didn't get great initial reviews or if he was just burned out on zombies. Maybe it was a combination of both. But when it was announced that Romero would be doing a new zombie movie called Land of the Dead (2005), I was very excited. By that point, I knew the first three films very well. Being able to finally see one in theaters meant a lot to me back then and it still does.
While Night of the Living Dead is the beginning of the zombie problem, Dawn of the Dead is a few weeks in, and Day of the Dead is at least several months in, Land of the Dead takes place several years into the zombie apocalypse. By now, people have learned a new way of living, or at least a way of "pretending to be alive", as Riley Denbo (Simon Baker) says in the very beginning of the movie. A crew with a weapon-rigged vehicle called Dead Reckoning raids abandoned towns for supplies all while trying to avoid being chomped on by the still very active living dead, Riley and Cholo DeMora (John Leguizamo) working with the crew, acting sort of as the leaders, though right away, the two are shown to not really see eye to eye. Of course, the supplies aren't really just for them, but they're for everyone inside of the secured city that they operate out of, especially the rich fuckers who live in the fancy tower called Fiddler's Green.
Instead of the scientists versus military scenario presented in Day of the Dead, this has more of a the poor versus the rich scenario. The poor are people like Riley and Cholo who live in a rather dirty, rundown environment outside of Fiddler's Green, though it has some areas of entertainment, like shooting paintball guns at zombies, while the rich are people like Kaufman (Dennis Hopper), who is pretty much the head of Fiddler's Green. The poor versus the rich isn't exactly an original concept, but it's pretty interesting when you throw it into a zombie apocalypse, showing how the future could possibly work if a zombie apocalypse ever really did occur. And the zombies do play a large role here, showing how they've also learned in their own way.
This movie had the biggest budget of any of the six Dead films so far, at $15 million, but a bigger budget doesn't automatically equal a better film. While the first three movies had very memorable soundtracks, this one has the generic, forgettable soundtrack issue that all newer movies seem to have. It's nothing bad, but it just doesn't stand out at all. Most of the characters also don't feel as polished as they could be. Cholo and Kaufman are easily the the best two characters and part of that is definitely because of the actors who play them, as well as Riley's sidekick, Charlie (Robert Joy). The gore is merely okay. There are a couple standout moments of gore throughout the movie though. Overall, where the previous films all felt like upgrades in those areas, the only real upgrade here is the plot, which was really just the next logical step.
And there's really not a whole lot else to say about this movie other than that Tom Savini makes a cameo as his character from Dawn of the Dead. First time a character carried over in one of the Dead movies. Unfortunately, he wasn't behind the movie's special effects. This movie does have quite a few flaws, but I still enjoy the hell out of it and it blows Diary of the Dead and Survival of the Dead out of the water. Maybe George Romero will wait another decade or so and then try again, but I wouldn't hold my breath on that. Especially since he's now got some comic book series called Empire of the Dead that involves some shit with zombies and vampires. I've never looked at it and from what I've heard, it's probably best to continue avoiding it.
If Dawn of the Dead was an upgrade of Night of the Living Dead, then George Romero's Day of the Dead (1985) was an upgrade to zombie genre as a whole. Even better make-up for the zombies and better gore effects? Check. A polished score by John Harrison that never feels out of place? Check. A great cast of characters who all grow on you in one way or another (yes, that includes this movie's main and, well, only living female character, unlike those two before...)? Check. This movie has it all and that's despite having its budget chopped in half, forcing Romero to change much of his original script to fit the lower budget, keeping only some of the characters and the basic ideas of the original script.
As void of life Dawn of the Dead might have seemed, especially towards the end of the movie, Day of the Dead starts right off with showing just how fucked up things have become as we see shots of a lifeless city, the only activity seen coming from alligators who have wandered into the city and the undead. Sarah (Lori Cardille), Miguel (Antonè DiLeo), John (Terry Alexander), and McDermott (Jarlath Conroy) land their helicopter in this city, the former two getting out to try to find anyone who might still be alive, only to quickly discover what we already know: there's no one. Getting the hell out of there, we then soon see that they operate out of an underground bunker built in a system of caves and learn that they've been searching for other survivors for a while now.
The underground bunker is inhabited by both scientists and the military, the military outnumbering the scientists by quite a few, which causes a lot of tension between the two groups. The scientists trying to study the zombies don't help with the tensions either as the military would much rather just "shoot the mothers in the head". John and McDermott live on their own in the caves, away from the two groups and their tension. It leads to some great drama though, making it feel more like a drama movie with zombies in the background at times. The arguments between Captain Rhodes (Joe Pilato) and Dr. Logan (Richard Liberty) are especially entertaining. That's not to say Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead don't have great moments of drama, but with Day of the Dead, it's an almost constant thing.
The budget this time around was $3.5 million, which is significantly larger than what the previous two Dead films had, but as I said before, it was originally twice as big. Supposedly the reason for the budget cut is because George Romero wanted it to be released unrated. The original script still involved an underground bunker and several other elements present in the movie, such as the scientists and military both living there, but there were more characters and some of them were quite different. Sarah, for example, came to the bunker from the outside with Miguel while in the movie, she's already a scientist there and he's already part of the military. It's not hard to find online and is a pretty interesting read if you're ever curious about it. It definitely would have been interesting to see actually filmed, but at the same time, maybe it's for the best that things went the way they did.
Tom Savini returned to do the special effects in Day of the Dead. I don't know if it's the bigger budget or if he just learned a lot in the seven years between this and Dawn of the Dead, but zombie make-up in particular is easily the best I've seen in any zombie movie or TV show. And then there's John Harrison's score. It has a very 1980's sound to it and it works perfectly, always helping set the mood for whatever scene it's used in. These two things combined with the plot and characters give it what I would call a slight edge over the great Dawn of the Dead. And speaking of the characters, I already mentioned how even Sarah grows on you in this movie, but it still must be said. After useless Barbra and almost just as useless Fran, Romero finally wrote a female character that could hold her own quite well. I don't know if this is because he was trying to show some kind of evolution of females in world of zombies or if he got criticism on his other two movies, but for this, Sarah is easily my favorite female character of the series.
George Romero's Dawn of the Dead (1978) was released exactly ten years after his first zombie masterpiece, Night of the Living Dead. In many ways, it's an upgrade of the first movie. It's in color, there's a lot more violence, the locations are grander, and the music is now a combination of stock music and music recorded by Italian progressive rock band Goblin, who were brought in by the movie's producer, Italian horror director Dario Argento. When I first saw Dawn of the Dead around 2000 or so, I didn't even realize that it was a sequel to anything, but I knew from the first moments of the movie inside of the television studio that I was watching a movie that was going to be nothing like anything I'd ever seen before. The music alone told me that. And it only got even better from there.
While Night of the Living Dead is the beginning of world's zombie problem, Dawn of the Dead begins a few weeks in. People are still in the cities, TV stations are still on air, and the police are still trying to battle crime, but right away, you can tell that there's an overall feeling of hopelessness. People are shown to be easily agitated and acting illogical. As I said before, the movie starts in a television studio, where Fran (Gaylen Ross) works and it's quite hectic, between the interview they're trying to air with a doctor to provide information to the public and people walking out on their jobs after having enough of the chaos in the studio. Eventually, her boyfriend, Stephen (David Emge), shows up to tell her his plan to escape with her. With them, they bring their cop friend, Roger (Scott Reiniger), and his new friend, Peter (Ken Foree).
Escaping from the city together isn't the end of their troubles though and exhausted from everything that's occurred, they eventually discover a shopping mall. Deeming a part of it to be safe enough, they decide to rest up there. After all, any place that's away from the living dead is a good place, right? Of course, there are strings attached to this little hiding spot they find, such as the fact that the rest of the mall is full of zombies and from how things have played out up to this point, it doesn't look like anyone will be coming to help them out anytime soon. I think the fact that it's just the four of them alone for most of the movie adds to the overall hopelessness of the situation.
With a budget a little higher than Night of the Living Dead, this time at $650,000, George Romero really does go all-out with Dawn of the Dead. In a way, it's hard to even compare it to the first movie, because while it sort of works as a companion piece as far as the style of the two movies go, with the low budget, great use of library music, and again setting the bar for zombie movies, it's also very much its own beast. You can really tell that Romero put as much heart into this as Night of the Living Dead, if not more considering the fact that he ended up with a script filled with specific details that caused it to be way more pages than the movie's length was actually intended to be.
Now, I mentioned in my Night of the Living Dead review how useless Barbra was and how George Romero almost did the same exact thing with this movie. Well, here, the problem is with Fran. She's almost just as fucking useless as Barbra! Again, I get that she might be in shock. But what she's gone through compared to what Barbra went through seems like nothing. When Stephen is trying to fight off a zombie and tells her to run, but she neither runs nor tries to help is just one of many instances when I feel like they would have been better off leaving her ass behind at the television studio. I do say Romero almost did the same thing for a reason though, because unlike Barbra, Fran does prove to be useful a few times in the movie.