Just what is a zombie?
A ghost. The living dead. It’s also a drink.
One of those rare, pre-George A. Romero zombie films, I Walked With A Zombie (1943) depicts something like the original myth, and has been referenced in such diverse literature as Thomas Pynchon’s Inherent Vice and Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch. Although flawed (and baffling to fans of the contemporary zombie) it transcends its B-picture status, and holds up better than most other pre-1968 zombie films.
And so ends summer 2015.
The next round of voting takes place here. There were three statistical upsets last week, as marked in bold blue text in these brackets. Since two of those are going head to head, they have the potential to throw things off of expectations for some time to come.
In case you haven’t heard, September 23, 2015 is the latest date when a subset of religious fundamentalists, conspiracy theorists, and Youtube buffoons insist absolutely, positively, the world will end! You know, just like it did in December 2012 and January 2000 and all those other prophetic dates.
Spoiler: there’s no reason to believe the world will end that day. However, September 23 will mark the autumnal equinox, and so, for this Summer Weekend Review, we’re discussing you Equinox. Made by college students for $6500.00 in 1967, it became a cult hit, and its creators were given time and money to film new sequences, stretching the movie to feature-length and gaining it wider distribution. Rereleased in 1970, the film influenced such people as George Lucas, Richard O’Brien, and Sam Raimi, received praise from Ray Harryhausen, and features cameos by Fritz Leiber and Forrest J. Ackerman.
It’s been awhile so here’s a bit of a roundup, including a first look at a new take on a classic Science Fiction tale.
It’s 1971 on the American highway. Duel gives Steven Spielberg his start, and Two-Lane Blacktop may be the purest road movie ever made. However, Duel‘s been made-for-TV, and only gradually will its reputation spread. Blacktop, after its initial run, will be plagued by soundtrack issues not resolved until the twenty-first century. The many years of too-few showings will bolster its cult status but limit its audience. The most successful road movie1 of that year is Vanishing Point, an existential car chase with enough mysticism that it also drifts across the line separating realism and fantasy, making it an unusual but appropriate choice for this Summer Weekend Review.
The latest episode of Silver Screen Superheroes is up here, where I discuss X-Men: First Class and how that fits in the X-Men universe of films.
The latest film adaptation of Marvel’s Fantastic Four has been making the news for the past few days based on angry tweets and horrifically bad reviews. I checked it out on Friday, but wanted time to process before writing this review. This is not as bad as the Rotten Tomatoes scores and other news would indicate. Don’t get me wrong: we’re three buses, a long walk and eight quid in a taxi from good, but it’s not as bad as you may have heard. This review will have more spoilers than usual, because I’m including some spoilerish analysis about what I think went wrong.
Round one ends here. Next week, we’ll have the final 128 movies starting a tournament style elimination. The eliminations to date follow.