We caught up with Chris to talk zombies, zombies and more zombies along with other subjects that is.

You say in your book Speak of the Dead that you first watched Day of the Dead when you where 11 years old. Is this what started your love of horror and Romero films especially?
Oh yeah definitely! Before then I think the only horror I had watched was 80s things like Lost boys and a thing called Monster Squad which not many people will remember, but it was ace. It probably isn’t now, but I remember it being a classic horror comedy in the style of Lost Boys. But when I saw Day of the Dead it kind of sparked something.

What do you think is it about the Dead trilogy that captivated and enthralled you and so many others?
Romero has a very unique vision that kind of goes past the films themselves. They have a real anger in them, underneath the plot, but on the surface they work as proper horror gore films as well. I just think that Romero was firing on both cylinders and always made a proper well rounded scary film with something to say. The themes always relate to people too, and are relevant to the times.

Speak of the Dead is a brilliant book excellently put together as part criticism, part making of, part personal opinion all extremely informative and very readable. How did you come to write it and how hard was the research process?
Thanks for the compliment about the book because it really means a lot. I loved writing it and to hear positive things about it is so rewarding. The research wasn’t hard at all, it was a thrill. I got to re watch the films, read the old interviews, interview the people involved with the making of the movies and really dig deep. I decided to write it because I failed to find a real definitive guide and homage to the films out there. Whenever I do a non fiction project it’s usually out of pure love of the subject matter. It was so fun doing this project.

The book contains some great interviews with essential cast members including the star of the original Night of the Living Dead Judith O’Dea and special effects legend Tom Savini among others. What where they like in real life and how did they feel about the legacy of the movies they made?
The fact they were open to answering these questions, the kind of things they have talked about for years and years on end, really shows how much they respect George Romero and how they appreciate their involvement in such a great legacy. I think Tom Savini’s involvement in the book is particularly great for me and the whole project itself, as he has such an interesting story to tell. I won’t go into it too much as he gives us some great insight into the films, but I do think it was fantastic that people like Joe Pilato, Captain Rhodes himself, were open to this book.

The films met with a lot of negative criticism when they first came out why do you think that is and why have they since been re-evaluated?
I think Romero’s films, Dawn aside, have all been met with hostility or even indifference which is worse in some ways, upon release. He isn’t afraid to ruffle a few feathers and always says something about society and human nature that maybe the critics didn’t want to address. These aren’t feel good movies but they continue to have validity in today’s times. Plus they were So gory for the times…. They have been re evaluated and appreciated as the works of art they are. In my opinion, the Dead movies are perfection!

Dawn of the Dead

Every true horror fan knows Romero is the Grandfather of the zombie having created pretty much all the conventions we now associate with modern day zombies. How much of Romero’s zombie creation was design and how much was accidental?
I learned that quite a bit of it, mostly in Night of the Living Dead, was accidental. The whole flesh eating thing came about one night in a brainstorming session between George and the other investors in the movie, and this is the thing we now associate most with the Living Dead. But I think by the time Dawn of the Dead arrived, Romero had the ideas pre planned and didn’t want to make a zombie film for the sake of making one. He was much more prepared with his themes and his attack on consumerism by the time the second film came along. I see him as the key representative of the genre and I don’t think anyone else comes near him.

You talk in the book about the audiences increasing relationship with the zombies which leads to us sometimes sympathising more with them than the human characters. How did Romero achieve this and what was he trying to tell the audience about themselves?
Romero’s films are basically about a lack of human communication. By the time Day of the Dead comes along, the humans are so pre occupied with arguing and fighting that the creatures don’t seem quite as sinister. The zombies are US, by that I mean how much have we changed from our original form to the slobbering, drooling, flesh craved beasts we become in his films? Romero holds a mirror to us all, especially in Dawn when he really questions the so called “importance” of consumer goods. I think he was basically saying that the pre sixties generations submitted to the limited scope of the system. Only a true hippy gent like George could point that out in such a cool way…

Romero’s packs his films full of social and political ideas and satire more than many other directors either in or outside of horror. Why do you think the films work so well on these multiple levels as entertainment, social comment and intellectual stimulation?
Because he balances it all so well. Gore wise, the first three, especially Day, cannot be beaten. They provide the thrills and the spills, making you sick with the violence at times. But he always stimulates the mind, for me anyway and he just gets it right. i think the one film he balanced it all perfectly, although it isn’t my favourite, was Dawn of the Dead. he just got it right in the centre with that one and it works on so many levels. You really need to watch it and pay proper attention; notice the details, the direction, the whole thingt.. He just gets it right. It takes a lot longer to define the brilliance, but I think I did that in the book as best anyone could really.

Survival of the Dead

What do you personally think of the Dead movies that followed the original trilogy including the remakes of the first three and the sequels made by Romero himself – Land of the Dead, Diary of the Dead and Survival of the Dead?
Well I think Romero’s follow ups are interesting and are all good films really. Land was really saying something about the snobbery of the class system, something I can really relate to in England. I also thought that Diary of the Dead really highlighted the ludicracy of the internet and the fact we have all this technology and have little to say with it. He was so on the mark with that film. The remakes are all OK, but they miss the underlying satire and become kind of video game shoot em ups.. which is Ok but not very Romero-esque when you look at them alongside his work.

What is Romero’s legacy on modern horror not just the zombie genre and what’s your opinion on the state of horror movies today?
I do think horror is thriving more than ever, but I’m kind of old fashioned for a young guy and think that people aren’t saying enough in their films. I mean, the sick things like Saw and all that type of genre.. it’s not my cup of tea, to sound really English.. But Romero is really respected for his older films, and kind of looked down on due to the last three by many of his fans. I think people should realise he is doing something really interesting and that he is the Master!

Has Romero read the book and if so what did he think?
No he hasn’t. I did try to get in contact but there was no reply. Which is a shame. But the blessings of the cast and especially Tom Savini does count for something. It’s an honour to have Lori Cardille and the others involved with the book.

Day of the Dead

Apart from Romero’s movies what other horror directors do you really rate?
It’s weird because I like the odd thing where the director who made it isn’t really a horror film maker. I LOVE The Shining and Exorcist, but Romero is the one guy I love as horror director. Saying that, I do like Carpenter a lot as well.

What’s next for you and ware there any other horror projects on the horizon?
I have a lot of other things due out. I always do a wide variety of types of projects. I have a kind of horror/psychological audiobook I wrote due in the new year and I also have a few more of my fiction books to release. I class myself as a surreal fiction writer really but I have a real passion for films and music too, so I do bits of non fiction on the side. I’ve been working with the comedian Charlie Chuck who is well known in the UK, lately on audio stuff and I have work out read on audio by the comedian Rik Mayall. It’s all on the Wisdom Twins site if anyone is interested.

Speak of the Dead is a brilliant book and available Here to buy and for more of Chris’s work check out his website and his blog.

Not only was it a zombie movie – and Buddha knows how many of those have been released since Romero reinvented the walking dead – but it was also a horror movie made on a low budget on digital video as a first person documentary style diary, witnessing the horror of the fall of man and the rise of the undead, released 7 years after Blair Witch.

Now we can all see that as a concept it sounded like a great idea for a British zombie movie however the execution was less than successful. What was planned to be a revolutionary horror breaking the boundaries of cinema while simultaneously scaring the bejesus out of us all ended up looking like a cheap amateurish straight to DVD movie with actors improvising around a non existent story and no scares at all.

So fast forward to 2011 and The World of the Dead: The Zombie Diaries (or The Zombie Diaries 2) is here. Will it be a new beginning for an interesting and imaginative storyline? Is it the perfect chance for the film makers to redeem themselves since the first one? Can it be the fresh start to reinvent the docu-style genre of horror cinema? Nope it’s just the same old story, this time with less imagination, less frights and a cast of worse actors.

The story is set 3 months after the outbreak of a virus which blah blah zombies blah blah end of humanity blah blah you all know the drill. Following a gang of stereotypical soldiers one of which just happens to have the urge to document everything that is going on with his handy everlasting battery powered camera, the groups attempts to escape England to find a safe haven somewhere in Europe.

As in the first film there are zombies everywhere and to make matters worse the only other humans still alive are nasty, evil, sex crazed bandits who love to rape and mutilate zombies while hunting out human survivors – who they also love to rape and mutilate.

The World of the Dead: The Zombie Diaries is made by the same duo as the first dreadful film meaning there is even less of an excuse why this sequel does not improve on the original. Written by Kevin Gates who also directs along with Michael Bartlett the only difference is this film follows one set of idiots escaping from zombies rather than three separate stories of idiots escaping from zombies.

There is some okay gore but the movie is let down by the cast who can barely walk around convincingly and the plot which has been seen in a zillion other zombie movies.
Filmed badly both deliberately and accidentally with the green night vision making it look like an episode of Most Haunted, the directors desperately try to create tension but the ever increasing ridiculousness of a solider who would rather film the zombies than shoot at them is distracting and preposterous. This leads to the audience not caring about the characters.

The scenes of rape and torture on zombies and the female members of the cast (especially one scene involving a mentally disabled bandit being bullied into joining in) are offensive and gratuitously pointless, and the films overall degrading treatment of women as victims including the main female solider is troubling. However the film is so bad it is not worth worrying about anyone seeing it, or being effected by it.

The fact that since the first Zombie Diaries first person found footage and fake documentary horrors such as REC, REC 2, Paranormal Activity, The Last Exorcism, Romero’s own Diary of the Dead and the upcoming brilliant Australian ghost story Lake Mungo (look out for our review soon!) have all come out and delivered all the things both The Zombie Diaries films failed to do is proof that Gates and Bartlett need to try something new or give up film making entirely.

Oh hold on lets see what there next project’s called?

The Paranormal Diaries.

Oh dear.

Movie Rating: ½☆☆☆☆ 

Trailer:

In a similar vein to Creepshow, Dario Argento and George Romero put together this little number, releasing it back in 1990.
As there are two tales, it’s probably best to look at them separately to begin with.

First off is The Facts About Mr. Valdemar.
A ruthless millionaire named Ernest Valdemar is at deaths door. However, his wife Jessica, and doctor Robert Hoffman can’t wait for him to die before getting it on. They also can’t wait to get their hands on his money, so they plot to sneak some of it out early.
By hypnotising the dying man, they get him to consent to cash withdrawals and plan to keep him going long enough to get rich.
However, when Ernest dies a little early, the plan starts to slip, and to make matters worse, he isn’t totally dead – as his being hypnotised at the time of death has left him in a weird kind of limbo.
As Jessica and Dr. Robert struggle to keep things together, all sorts of forces work against them, seemingly determined to keep the money out of their reach.

This tale reminded me a lot of ‘Father’s Day’ from Creepshow. And minus the cartoon graphics, the style was very similar.
It’s dark, nicely shot (if a little too like a made for TV production) and well paced.
retro horror lovers will enjoy the fact that Adrienne Barbeau (The Fog, Swamp Thing, Escape from New York) plays the lead, and there’s even a cameo by one of my favourites, Tom Atkins (The Fog, Halloween 3, The Creeps).

The story is pretty simple, perhaps too much so, but is told well. The climax is definitely chilling, and there are even a few jumps thrown in for good measure.

Black Cat stars none other than Harvey Keitel playing Roderick Usher, a crime scene photographer who lives with Annabel, a young violin teacher. Things seem good between them until she takes in a stray black cat. There’s something about this moggy that Roderick doesn’t like; the way it looks at him, the way it scratches him all the time…
He goes off the rails fast and in a drunken rage, kills the animal. However, this feline is hard to beat, and keeps coming back for more.It even comes to him in a strange dream about medieval times (?!).
Annabel’s love for the creature the couple apart, and it seems that she is more concerned about its whereabouts than she is about her partner.
As Roderick grows more wild and violent, the cat is even more determined to haunt him. And when he does wrong, it seems that the puss is determined to let everyone know about it.

Black Cat is a little odd, that is, stranger than The Facts About Mr. Valdemar. It’s harder to fathom who the characters are and generally what’s going on. There is also a pretty weird dream sequence that on reflection, seems a bit too random and a somewhat unnecessary addition to the plot.
However, Keitel is great as the savage, alcoholic photographer and his character alone is intriguing enough to keep the viewer’s interest.
In many ways, Black Cat is a nastier film. There is more gore, more brutality, and more mystery. The tale is a twisted one, about revenge and the consequences of actions, and the way in which it is filmed is very reminiscent of Argento’s other works.

Generally, Two Evil Eyes is an entertaining double bill. Neither story would have been quite strong enough to stand as a lone feature, but complement each other in the way that they are different, a little strange and both equally well produced and absorbing.

It you’re a lover of Tales from the Crypt, Creepshow, Tales of the Unexpected or any other such collections of disturbing tales, this will be a great addition to your collection.

Two Evil Eyes is out on DVD from 10 May.

Movie Rating: ★★★½☆ 

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As you probably know, the main man responsible for this growth is George Romero, who kicked things off with Night of the Living Dead in 1968, followed by Dawn of the Dead in 1978 and then Day of the Dead in 1985.

Day of the Dead leads nicely on from the first two. The world has been overrun by the undead and humans are few and far between. In a remote research facility in the Florida everglades are 12 or so survivors, made up of soldiers, scientists and a couple of other useful people. They’re relatively safe from the flesh-eaters in this high security facility where they are working to find a cure to the zombie problem. Unfortunately though, things inside the camp are getting strained and unpredictable as resources are running low, and people keep dying for various reasons.

Our main character is Sarah (Lori Cardille), a strong willed woman (arguably the first in her class in the horror genre) who is keen to find a scientific answer to the epidemic. It’s not easy for her though, caught in between a mad scientist, dubbed Frankenstein who seems to get distracted easily, and Captain Rhodes and his band of unpredictable army goons who are looking for any excuse to shoot things.
Maintaining balance in such a situation isn’t easy and soon Sarah finds herself torn between her work, her love (for a soldier named Miguel) and the potential to escape with two guys – John and William – who pilot the only helicopter.

The film has a few layers to it which is why it’s a favourite with film buffs. Race and sex divisions in society, the cold war and even vivisection are all things that you could mention should you want to write an essay about it.
But on a simpler level, it’s a damn good zombie movie.

First off, it begins with the zombie problem already in full swing, something that hadn’t really been done at the time. Although free of the immediate threat of being eaten, the survivors are still prisoners, buried alive in the underground facility and waiting for what seems to be an inevitable gory end.
Although a little zany at times, the performances are pretty excellent, the cast portraying various levels of stress, desperation and even insanity, from the mad scientist to the paranoid barking army captain.
And at the heart of it, a heroine with morals, a level head, and a couple of friends who want to encourage her to do exactly what we at home would do – run away!

On top of all that, you get some really cool effects (courtesy of SFX legend, Steven Kirshoff) with loads of people being pulled apart and eaten alive. Some of the zombies don’t look great, but there are a few that make up for it all with absolute hideousness.
Plus, a peculiar retro soundtrack which is a bit random and great fun. No 80′s horror movie is complete without a random soundtrack.

By todays standards the film doesn’t seem groundbreaking. But you must remember that this was the foundation upon which all the others were built. And not just zombie movies either. Sarah could easily have been inspiration for Ripley in the Alien films for instance.

This film is an essential part of any horror lovers repertoire and deserves pride of place on the bookshelf alongside The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Halloween.
If you haven’t seen it, do so immediately. If you have, maybe it’s about time that you saw it again.

Movie Rating: ★★★★¼ 

The Day of the Dead 25th Anniversary edition is released on 29th March and includes special features such as: Four sleeve art options; double-sided fold-out poster; ‘For Every Dawn There Is A Day’ collector’s booklet; ‘Day Of The Dead: Desertion’ – an all new exclusive 24-page collector’s comic featuring new Bub storyline.

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Trailer:

In Night of the Living Dead (1968) Romero took the idea of the walking dead and turned it into something realistic and terrifying. Zombies were once the stuff of legend, from distant lands where voodoo and superstition was rife.

But thanks to George they were soon the new monster on the block, up there with Dracula and the Wolfman, scaring cinema audiences worldwide.
Dawn of the Dead was the sequel to his debut zombie hit. Set soon after the first, it opens with mass panic across America. The population struggling to deal with the idea that the dead are re-animating and eating the living.
In the cities, although there is still an order of sorts, it’s unravelling fast and the police are struggling to keep the masses (both living and dead) under control.
Francine (our main character) works on a TV station, her main purpose in this desperate time being to inform and comfort the viewers, making sure that the station stays on air.
When her partner Stephen arrives to meet her though, she realises that hope is pretty much lost, begrudgingly agreeing that they should escape on Peter’s helicopter. He has a police/SWAT friend (Roger) to take along, who in turn brings one of his gun toting colleagues (Peter), and together the 4 leave the city and fly off in search of sanctuary.

After a lot of flying and with fuel and food short, the group find a large shopping mall and land on the roof. Although there are zombies inside, they are restricted to the lower areas, and armed with plenty of guns, Francine and co decide that it could be a good place to stay.
And stay they do as they settle in to the mall, making it their own and almost enjoying their new zombie-filled lives. The only real threat being the odd zombie attack and the risk of intrusion by looters or other bad minded humans.

As per usual (with Romero) this isn’t just a horror movie. Any film grad will tell you, there are hidden meanings behind this zombie splatterfest. Beneath the gore and basic dialogue, issues such as the Vietnam war, consumerism and inequality in society are covertly touched upon. It’s a bonus because you can make out that you’re enlightening yourself when really it just feels like you’re watching an old zombie film.

Although I do love the oldies, I feel that Dawn of the Dead hasn’t aged as well as some of its peers.
I can get over the weird music and unimpressive zombie make-up (they look more like the Blue Man Group), but some of the acting is pretty weak, and the action seems very slow and clunky.

Worst of all, the zombies don’t actually seem very scary. They’re really weak, dumb and apparently have blunt teeth – most of the time they need a good few minutes to actually sink those disease-ridden fangs in.
I find it peculiar as both Night of the Living Dead and Day of the Dead seem to get it pretty spot on – really scary, threatening zombies.

Of course, the Dawn remake (2004) does overcompensate with zombies that run – but lets pretend that never happened.
It had been a long time since I had first seen this (in my early teens), and although it looked great in all its High Definition glory the second time round, it all just seemed a lot slower that I remembered; The zombies, the storyline, the action – too slow in fact. Especially when compared to the high velocity that we’re accustomed to in modern horror.

Don’t get me wrong, Dawn of the Dead is still a ‘must see’, be it to revel in zombie history, complete your zombie movie collection, or to analyse its hidden meanings. It’s great for it’s time.
Sadly though, I think it would be lost on the younger generations who wouldn’t be interested without some 3D exploding brains or vampires smooching with one another.

Movie Rating: ★★★★☆ 

The Dawn of the Dead special edition 3 disc Blu Ray box-set is available to buy now.

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Trailer: