George A Romero: Between Night and Dawn. (18)
There's Always Vanilla (1971)/ The Season Of The Witch (1972)/ The Crazies.
All directed by George A Romero. Out on a dual format Blu-ray/ DVD boxset from Arrow Video.
The title screams zombies but the living dead are entirely absent from this collection. These are the films Romero made between his first classic The Night of the Living Dead and his last Dawn Of The Dead, or rather the first three of them. He also did a few things for TV and made the feature Martin, a pretty decent drama (as I remember) about a teenager who thinks he may be a vampire. Those, and the films collected here are significant because if any of them had been hits he may well never have gone back to the Zombies, or become increasingly stuck on a Zombie treadmill.
The collection is unfortunately well-timed, coming out just months after Romero died, aged 77. The films here show a bold, inventive and imaginative filmmaker, but one whose ambitions often ran way beyond his abilities, and his budget. All of these films are shoestring affairs made on grainy colour stock with some variable acting. I have to admit I approached these with some trepidation, assuming there was a reason why they were “lost.” Overall though this collection is definitely on the higher end of expectations.
There's Always Vanilla. 93 mins. Starring Ray Laine, Judith Streiner, Roger McGovern and Johanna Lawrence.
This one though we can brush through quickly. Romero describes it as his worst film, complains that he didn't have enough money to do it properly and that it should've stayed as a half hour piece made as a showreel for lead actor Ray Laine. Maybe, but it has some charm as a period piece. Laine is drifting through life post-army, a guitarist who is sick of hearing himself on other people's record, hooking up with a couple ladies. It's vaguely similar to Coppola's You're A Big Boy Now or Scorsese's Who's That Knocking On My Door, films about relationships and the changing times.
Season Of The Witch. 93 mins Starring Jan White, Ray Laine, Anne Muffly.
Romero's third film is full of ideas, an arthouse feminist occult drama, full of dream sequences, like Bergman adapting a Dennis Wheatley novel. Jan White is the bored and frustrated housewife who doesn't understand the younger generations, disapproves of their sexual liberation but wants to be part of it. Part of her way out is to dabble in witchcraft, but the film is ambiguous as to whether there is anything occult going on. It is much more a character drama than a horror film but there are a few disturbing and unnerving moments in it. The title Season of the Witch was attached to the film much later. Romero refers to it as Jack's Wife, but the title card calls it Hungry Wives, remnant of an attempt to rebrand it as a softcore romp.
The Crazies. 103 mins. Starring Lane Carroll, Will MacMillan, Harold Wayne Jones.
Arguably his best non-Zombie film, The Crazies is a deadly-virus-hits-small-town piece, but with a twist. The twist is that before it kills its victims, the biological weapon Trixie sends them mad. Evan City near Pittsburgh finds itself quarantined and invaded by soldier in white protective overalls and gas masks, who start rounding up the locals to get them together in the high school. A group though slip the net and try to get out. Like all virus dramas, there is the irony of siding with the group who want to remain free, even though they are likely to spread the virus to the rest of us if they succeed.
The film's attitude to the military is bravely ambivalent, given the time it was made. Though they look unworldly menacing in their gas masks, the infected citizens are even more disturbing: homicidal grannies wielding knitting needles. In most cases, the soldiers are not trigger happy, are reluctant to open fire on the citizenry, no matter how crazy they are. A lot of the film is about military logistics and bureaucracy. There are loads of scenes of colonels and majors shouting into phones and cursing because something hasn't been done, someone can't be found. Usually in films, the military is shown as running like clockwork but here they are scattered and disorganised.
It's a good film but the acting is all over the place and someone should have had a word with Romero's fake blood supplier because the ketchup coloured stuff that splatters out of gunshot wounds in this film is garishly unrealistic.
Extras.
Every disc comes packed with features. There's a, slightly nerdy, commentary for each film and an hour-long meeting between Romero and Guillermo Del Toro.
There's Always Vanilla (1971)/ The Season Of The Witch (1972)/ The Crazies.
All directed by George A Romero. Out on a dual format Blu-ray/ DVD boxset from Arrow Video.
The title screams zombies but the living dead are entirely absent from this collection. These are the films Romero made between his first classic The Night of the Living Dead and his last Dawn Of The Dead, or rather the first three of them. He also did a few things for TV and made the feature Martin, a pretty decent drama (as I remember) about a teenager who thinks he may be a vampire. Those, and the films collected here are significant because if any of them had been hits he may well never have gone back to the Zombies, or become increasingly stuck on a Zombie treadmill.
The collection is unfortunately well-timed, coming out just months after Romero died, aged 77. The films here show a bold, inventive and imaginative filmmaker, but one whose ambitions often ran way beyond his abilities, and his budget. All of these films are shoestring affairs made on grainy colour stock with some variable acting. I have to admit I approached these with some trepidation, assuming there was a reason why they were “lost.” Overall though this collection is definitely on the higher end of expectations.
There's Always Vanilla. 93 mins. Starring Ray Laine, Judith Streiner, Roger McGovern and Johanna Lawrence.
This one though we can brush through quickly. Romero describes it as his worst film, complains that he didn't have enough money to do it properly and that it should've stayed as a half hour piece made as a showreel for lead actor Ray Laine. Maybe, but it has some charm as a period piece. Laine is drifting through life post-army, a guitarist who is sick of hearing himself on other people's record, hooking up with a couple ladies. It's vaguely similar to Coppola's You're A Big Boy Now or Scorsese's Who's That Knocking On My Door, films about relationships and the changing times.
Season Of The Witch. 93 mins Starring Jan White, Ray Laine, Anne Muffly.
Romero's third film is full of ideas, an arthouse feminist occult drama, full of dream sequences, like Bergman adapting a Dennis Wheatley novel. Jan White is the bored and frustrated housewife who doesn't understand the younger generations, disapproves of their sexual liberation but wants to be part of it. Part of her way out is to dabble in witchcraft, but the film is ambiguous as to whether there is anything occult going on. It is much more a character drama than a horror film but there are a few disturbing and unnerving moments in it. The title Season of the Witch was attached to the film much later. Romero refers to it as Jack's Wife, but the title card calls it Hungry Wives, remnant of an attempt to rebrand it as a softcore romp.
The Crazies. 103 mins. Starring Lane Carroll, Will MacMillan, Harold Wayne Jones.
Arguably his best non-Zombie film, The Crazies is a deadly-virus-hits-small-town piece, but with a twist. The twist is that before it kills its victims, the biological weapon Trixie sends them mad. Evan City near Pittsburgh finds itself quarantined and invaded by soldier in white protective overalls and gas masks, who start rounding up the locals to get them together in the high school. A group though slip the net and try to get out. Like all virus dramas, there is the irony of siding with the group who want to remain free, even though they are likely to spread the virus to the rest of us if they succeed.
The film's attitude to the military is bravely ambivalent, given the time it was made. Though they look unworldly menacing in their gas masks, the infected citizens are even more disturbing: homicidal grannies wielding knitting needles. In most cases, the soldiers are not trigger happy, are reluctant to open fire on the citizenry, no matter how crazy they are. A lot of the film is about military logistics and bureaucracy. There are loads of scenes of colonels and majors shouting into phones and cursing because something hasn't been done, someone can't be found. Usually in films, the military is shown as running like clockwork but here they are scattered and disorganised.
It's a good film but the acting is all over the place and someone should have had a word with Romero's fake blood supplier because the ketchup coloured stuff that splatters out of gunshot wounds in this film is garishly unrealistic.
Extras.
Every disc comes packed with features. There's a, slightly nerdy, commentary for each film and an hour-long meeting between Romero and Guillermo Del Toro.
