Misc
HORROR 101: The Lore Behind the Romero Zombie Films (And Their Many Terrible Knockoffs)
Welcome back to Horror 101, a series of articles where we explain horror movie legends and their lore. For beginners, the confused, or just those who need a refresher, these articles are for you.
The zombie craze of the 2000s to 2010s had an undeniable and unrelenting grip on the consciousness of horror fans and the world in general. Shambling masses of the formerly living were a hot commodity, in everything from television to movies to gaming, and just about everything zombie was being greenlit. But as that new zombie bubble grew and properties like The Walking Dead and The Last of Us were exploding in popularity, the original series of films that started it all were finding a second wind: Romero’s “Night of the Living Dead” series was back, and even had new films being made. Night of the Living Dead, the one and only!
…And Return of the Living Dead.
And it’s sequels.
And also Zack Snyder was doing his own thing.
So, it may have gotten a little confusing trying to sort out and untangle the many overlapping Romero and Romero-like zombie films. But that’s what we’re here to do today: sorting out the various canons, how their zombies came to be, and how two franchises sprung from one classic movie. And hopefully, we won’t boil our brains in the process.
WHY ARE THERE SO MANY DIFFERENT LIVING DEAD MOVIES?
From the jump, what is now a piece of horror film history was a controversial coming attraction. George Romero and John A. Russo’s Night of the Living Dead, a story of survival in a bizarre and at the time unheard-of zombie apocalypse, was met with anger and indignation for its liberal amounts of violence in an era where the MPAA’s rating system was yet to be implemented (many even suspect Romero’s work was a major catalyst for getting the rating system codified).
But more important than its taboo nature was how much it made back: Night of the Living Dead was a smash hit at the box office, making back over 250 times its budget and cementing a franchise. But where there’s money, there are big problems: the schism between Night of the Living Dead’s many sequels is primarily a case of ownership of the film rights.
In another case of creatives suffering from success and splitting up (I’m looking at you Friday the 13th), Russo and Romero had differences regarding how they should take the property forward. Eventually, they settled on splitting the film’s “surnames”, with Russo owning the rights to title films with the phrase “Of the Living Dead”, while Romero owned the rights to make films under the “Of the Dead” title.
WHAT FILMS MAKE UP THE “OF THE DEAD” SERIES?
Despite what some cursory Google searching might tell you, the Night of the Living Dead series (or “Of the Dead” series) is six films, only 4 of which are in the same continuity.
The only direct sequels to Night of the Living Dead are Dawn of the Dead, Day of the Dead, and Land of the Dead. The slow collapse of society, the behaviors of the zombies in these films, and the motif of zombies regaining some intelligence over time are the primary links between them since the casts of each film are never connected. In these films, the zombies result from some unknown pathogen, with the original film indicating it was brought back to Earth by a space probe returning from Venus.
Be it radiation or a cosmic virus, it raises the recently dead and turns them into contagious monsters, which eventually causes the destruction of society and leaves humanity separated into small clades. But they have one fatal weak spot: having their brains destroyed. (I know you knew this. Of course you knew this, who doesn’t know this?) Diary of the Dead (2007) and its follow-up prequel Survival of the Dead (2009) are not actually sequels or reboots to the previous films in the franchise, but their own weird third thing. They just share the “Of The Dead” name because of Romero’s claim to it, and have similar zombies. In these films, we never actually find out what caused the zombies to rise from their grave.
But we do get an Amish guy fighting zombies and flinging dynamite at them, which was kind of cool.
WHAT’S UP WITH THE RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD SERIES?
Return of the Living Dead, however, is a completely different beast. Russo’s Return series takes a unique approach as a sequel, and paints the events of Night of the Living Dead as a dramatized version of a real-world government coverup.
Though Night is just a film in this universe, Return of the Living Dead posits it depicts the first Trioxin outbreak: the experimental use of a bio-weapon known as Trioxin gas created nearly indestructible zombies that hunger for human brains. These zombies are also fully conscious, feel everything happening to them, and eat brains as a form of relief, which is absolute nightmare fuel! They can, however, be put down with electricity, as we find out in Return of the Living Dead 2.
Though the government was able to control the first outbreak, some of the zombies remaining bodies ended up being stashed at a medical supply warehouse in Louisville, Kentucky. Shock of shocks, some bozos open the canisters containing their remains, and a second outbreak ravages the United States.
The U.S. Army is incredibly incompetent in these movies, so the outbreaks happen a few more times in the sequels, and control of Trioxin gets so bad that college students even begin taking it as a recreational drug just for fun.
It’s all just a series of Trioxin “whoopsies” really.
WHAT ABOUT ZACK SNYDER’S “OF THE DEAD” MOVIES?
These have no relation, to either of the previous series really. Dawn of the Dead (2004) is a remake of the original Dawn of the Dead, but does not share continuity with Night of the Living Dead or any of its sequels. Army of the Dead (2021) is also somehow not a sequel to Dawn of the Dead (2004). For some reason? I wish I had a better answer for that.
ARE THE ZOMBI FILMS SEQUELS TO NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD?
This, this question is the one that gets me.
Hilariously, due to the Italian legal system, yes. The first Zombi film was just an Italian rerelease of Dawn of the Dead, and because Italian copyright law allows producers to make sequels to films they didn’t make, Fabrizio De Angelis was able to make a sequel to Dawn of the Dead called Zombi 2. It was also directed by giallo visionary Lucio Fulci, who gave us that amazing scene of a zombie fighting a shark!
This leads to an even more confusing chain of films. In Italy, there are only three official Zombi movies, but there are two other Zombi 3’s that were not sequels to Zombi 2 and just took the name! To make it even worse, Zombi’s 4 and 5 are American releases of unrelated Italian films, which is completely backwards from how we started this. On top of that, Pulgasari, a film we discussed here, is called Zombi: The Communist Bull-Monster for its Pakistan release, despite having no zombies, no communists, and if you really think about it, arguably no bull monster! My brain is boiling inside my skull!
…But yes, the answer to that question is yes. The three Zombi films are their own separate and messed-up continuity splintering off from the original Dawn of the Dead and, by extension, Night of the Living Dead.
Well, that should be all for today’s Horror 101 lesson. See you in the next class and stay tuned to Horror Press’s social media feeds (@HorrorPressLLC on Twitter and Instagram) for more content on horror movies, television, and everything in between!
Misc
HORROR 101: What is The New French Extremity Movement?
What is New French Extremity? The term New French Extremity originated in film journalist James Quandt’s article “Flesh & Blood: Sex and Violence in Recent French Cinema”. The bulk of the article addresses a rash of more violent films that were coming out of French cinema in the late 90s and early 2000s; the article sites Bruno Dumont’s 2003 art film Twentynine Palms as inciting the criticism, seeing it as the latest in a long line of, to him, unimpressive French films at the turning point of a century.
Welcome back to Horror 101, a series of articles where we explain horror movie legends and their lore. For beginners, the confused, or just those who need a refresher, these articles are for you.
It is certainly ironic to be close-minded as a horror fan. What do you mean you’ll watch fifteen terribly made movies in a week but then turn your nose up at something 20 minutes longer than your usual runtime? (That one was aimed at me, so if you caught a stray, apologia).
But, I’ve always been particularly averse to one grouping of films: New French Extremity, a genre whose name came from an article deriding the very notion of it. In more recent years, I’ve grown some appreciation for its offerings, though, as I’ve come to understand the commentary it has to share. It’s a genre pockmarked by bleak cinematic landscapes, painted with the pains of human suffering and grotesqueries to reflect the horrors of the real world. A genre that often delves into the surreal, wading knee-high through depravity to get there.
…Assuming you can call it a genre.
Like German Expressionism, or Dadaism, it’s a style with some major tenets, but no concrete trappings; debated and shaped by its watchers, and now brought to you here. It’s sometimes hard to grasp, but today’s article will try its hardest to answer the question…
WHAT IS NEW FRENCH EXTREMITY?
The term New French Extremity originated in film journalist James Quandt’s article “Flesh & Blood: Sex and Violence in Recent French Cinema”. The bulk of the article addresses a rash of more violent films that were coming out of French cinema in the late 90s and early 2000s; the article sites Bruno Dumont’s 2003 art film Twentynine Palms as inciting the criticism, seeing it as the latest in a long line of, to him, unimpressive French films at the turning point of a century.
Quandt generally writes them off, indicating that they utilize their debauchery as a blunt tool in a clumsy attempt to evoke some sort of philosophical or political message about the human condition, as opposed to the artistic movements of centuries prior like the French Decadent Movement and Dadaism that inspired it. Ironically, the term New French Extremity erupted from this article as the main takeaway for film scholars and critics, because Quandt caps off the article by saying that the grouping of films are too varied in their vision to be considered a proper genre:
The New French Extremity sometimes looks like a latter-day version of the hussards, those Céline-loving, right-wing anarchists of the ’50s determined to rock the pieties of bourgeois culture; but for all their connections (shared actors, screenwriters, etc.), the recent provocateurs are too disparate in purpose and vision to be classified as a movement. […] it appears to be the last gasp of Gallic libertinism.
And so, New French Extremity was minted as a piece of the cinematic lexicon. Jargon meant to describe not only grotesque thriller and horror films coming out of France from the 90s onward, but films whose whole cinematography (both by visuals and by narrative) is rooted in being transgressive. No matter how horrible you think a concept is, New French Extreme will depict it, and no matter how sacred you think something is, expect it to be trampled on with some extremely profane filmmaking. It’s about being so grotesque that they evoke raw and pure disgust, often to reflect the film’s themes or philosophical ideas.
Then, you might ask…
WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN NEW FRENCH EXTREMITY AND SPLATTER FILMS?
Surely, films like Saw, Hostel, and Human Centipede have political messages underpinned by their violence. And yes, the Saw franchise in particular can at turns be very meanspirited and violent while being bluntly political; it is what I’d call the most politically American horror film series of all time, and its traps and the major bodily dysfunction they cause are a big part of that.
But in the end, it’s not being an American film that separates it from the genre, as even if it were a French film it wouldn’t fit either. Part of the horror of New French Extreme films is how the violence is presented; it is served as real, raw, and uncut as possible. It is unflinchingly (and unhappily) violent, and grounded in a level of uncomfortable reality. So, there goes another tenet of the movement: it has to crank up the meanspirited energy in its violence, and it can’t really be “fun” in how it displays its extremity.
WHO ARE THE DIRECTORS OF THE NEW FRENCH EXTREMITY MOVEMENT?
As critical as Quandt was of the idea, he did provide a very handy list of names to focus on as the most prominent voices of the movement:
“François Ozon, Gaspar Noé, Catherine Breillat, Philippe Grandrieux—and now, alas, [Bruno] Dumont”.
Names missing from that list, but which crop up later in the article and in the scene in general include Alexandre Aja (director of High Tension), Virginie Despentes (the mind behind the very controversial Baise-moi), Alexandre Bustillo & Julien Maury (the duo behind Inside and this years The Soul Eater), and Pascal Laugier (of Martyrs and Incident in a Ghostland fame). And though Xavier Gens was a bit late to the party with his 2007 film Frontier(s), he is an important director in terms of where the movement went and where it’s going with its politics. This isn’t a comprehensive list, but a good starting point for you if you’re interested in the genre.
WHO IS THE MOST INFLUENTIAL NEW FRENCH EXTREMITY DIRECTOR?
The short answer? Michael Haneke. The long answer? Technically, Haneke popularized the use of transgressive elements to shock and disquiet the audience among his contemporaries. Still, Gaspar Noé is the genre codifier and the most dominant voice in the space creatively.
Despite the extreme nature of films like Funny Games and The Seventh Continent (both brutal and genuinely terrifying), I personally find myself in the camp that his movies are not New French Extreme. We can debate the limits of how messed up something has to be before it’s considered extreme until the cows come home. But the fact is, if you put Haneke’s work alongside all of the films I’ve listed above in the previous segment, he would be the odd man out. He is, simply put, considerably more restrained in terms of showing gore and sexual violence, and the majority of his films’ horror and anxiety come from psychological aspects rather than physical consequences.
The material world is the battleground of the New French Extreme, and the nauseating nature of the films is the tool that Quandt named as the hallmark of the movement. With that in mind, I believe that Gaspar Noé, instead, should be considered the godfather of the genre. Given his films are the most well-known and commercially successful of the New French Extreme “movement”, he is more than worthy of the title; not to mention, he’s the most extreme in all regards. I would consider Irreversible’s directing and presentation to be the peak of the New French Extreme, since its nausea-inducing and sickening content comes with plenty of disorienting directing and editing; and for people with better sound setups than mine, you’ll find the little sound design trick that Noé placed in the film to make it as disturbing as possible.
WHAT IS THE MEANING OF NEW FRENCH EXTREMITY?
A question that is much less definitional, and much more philosophical. Why the bleak landscapes? Why the hopeless endings? Why so much violence against women, especially THAT kind of violence? And there is no clear answer, as every filmmaker has a different motivation. However, there is an undeniably political slant running through most of these movies that can all generally be applied to the rise of the right-wing and alt-right in French politics from the 1990s onward.
Film scholars like Alice Haylett Bryan and Marc Olivier have pointed to films like Inside, Sheitan, and Frontiers as coinciding with and commentating on the rise of politicians like Nicolas Sarkozy, politicians running on strong anti-immigration platforms and blaming the immigrant populations of France for its ills like the 2005 riots. Though it is less easy to see on the surface level, the Mademoiselle of Martyrs and her secret society are a group of wealthy, white French aristocrats who find purpose through the suffering of others, depicted as the impoverished and WOC; they even describe the process of torturing their martyrs as something they do “systematically”, akin to the policies of a government.
Like the trend of the nuclear monster reflecting our Cold War anxieties in the 50s and 60s, and the spike of home invasion films that took place in the 70s, New French Extreme directors have political engines built into their movies. The shocking parts of New French Extremity punctuate what many of these films are supposed to be: countercultural art meant to attack and depict the dangerous political ideologies that spends the lifeblood and livelihood of underserviced people as currency; ideologies that could very well pose a threat to the existence of a democratic France itself.
New French Extremity’s horrifying sights are not only made effective through the verisimilitude of their directing and production; they are made to remind you of the world’s much more realistic terrors, here right now and possibly yet to come.
DO YOU HAVE NEW FRENCH EXTREMITY RECOMMENDATIONS?
So, now for your required reading from this lecture.
Needless to say, all of the films mentioned in this article bear a massive and profoundly long list of trigger warnings (seriously), primarily for their intense violence, depictions of sexual violence, and depictions of pretty much every terrible thing you can imagine. Please make sure to do your research before watching any of these, and don’t skimp on the self care.
Martyrs (2008) has some of my favorite reveals in any horror movie, and an unforgettable ending you won’t want spoiled, so watch this one first. High Tension is a favorite of many Horror Press readers and writers for a reason. It’s an unrelenting, pulse-pounding film that earns its controversial reputation, and you don’t really feel safe until it’s over (if that). Trouble Every Day gets a lot of flak from Quandt in his original article (what doesn’t?), but I went in blind and was completely caught off guard by what the movie turns into, so avoid any spoilers if you want to see something interesting. Sheitan is a head trip of a film, with recurring face-of-the-genre Vincent Cassel cranking up the madness dial on his performance to an 11. Calvaire, likewise, has a very demented villain on par with the main antagonist of Inside, so they would make for a very interesting double feature if you can stomach two at a time. And while I said Haneke is not New French Extreme, if you want something a little quieter but with an ending that will shake you to your core, I suggest watching The Seventh Continent.
That brings me to the one very big question I had writing this:
Should I even recommend Irreversible? It may be the one film that embodies New French Extremity the most, given how far it pushes the envelope. But do I like it?
No.
It personally is just too much for me. It’s bleak, horrific, it will disturb you entirely and might very well ruin your week, and I can’t stand to watch it. Which is the whole point, but there’s a limit to what I can tolerate. I find Noe is unflinching in his determination to make you run from the theatre and abandon the film altogether, especially in its most infamous and cruel sequence.
From a film history perspective, it is undeniably a piece that has carved itself into French cinema indelibly (for better and for worse), and if you want to plumb the depths of human horror, you’ll be hard-pressed to find as difficult of a watch. So, when you ask me, “Should I watch Irreversible?”, I can only meet you with one honest response: you can certainly try to.
Good luck with that, horror fan.
***
And that will be it for today’s Horror 101 lesson. See you in the next class and stay tuned to Horror Press’s social media feeds for more content on horror movies, television, and everything in between.
I’ve talked about Frogman from writer/director Anthony Cousins ad nauseam. It even made my Favorite 3 Horror Movies of 2023 list. Hearing that Frogman was getting a physical release from Terror Vision was music to my ears. And, honestly, how crazy was it that it was also getting shelf space at Walmart?! Very rarely can you find a film that killed on the festival circuit and then was readily available on physical media at both a boutique distribution online store as well as a big box retailer.
August 10th, 2024, would be a day that changed my life; Terror Vision was releasing a deluxe edition Blu-ray bundle with a limit of 100 copies. Typically, boutique labels will do limited edition slipcases for films, limiting them between 1,000 and 2,500 copies. The Frogman Deluxe Edition bundle was different. For $68 bucks, you could get one of the most unique and visually stunning releases of my lifetime. So I purchased it. After preordering this majestic bundle, I waited patiently for two and a half months…and then it arrived.
The purpose of this piece isn’t to rub my one (hundred) of a kind purchase in anyone’s face, instead, it’s to highlight the care and beauty behind this release. Simply put, if you love a movie and find it being released by Terror Vision, you should pick it up. Here is the physical side of what came with this bundle:
- A black MILF (Man I Love Frogman) shirt
- A double-sided foldout poster
- A Frogman-themed brochure of Loveland, Ohio/Frogman Point (With a 15% off coupon for Sticky Tongue Gifts & Collectibles)
- A Loveland, Ohio postcard
- A sticker set
- The Fortune Teller Miracle Fish (not listed on the bundle’s itinerary, but a happy inclusion)
- A Frogman mug
- A bound film-supplement book
- A limited rigid box that perfectly fits over the embossed slipcase
- AND A CD full of frog sounds!
In all honesty, I initially thought $68 was a steep price. As the minutes passed, I knew my chance of picking one up was dwindling. Once I opened the box, put on the shirt, read the book, and drank some lukewarm coffee out of my mug…
I realized it was beyond worth the price.
Terror Vision has set the bar for labels like Shout! Factory, Vinegar Syndrome, Arrow Video, and many more. I do not know who runs the program behind the scenes, but it’s clear they are some of the deepest fans of physical media out there. If I had to nitpick, there was one issue I have with the Blu-ray. The title screen. It’s a flat image with a play, subtitles, and special features option. These options are overlaid over a thick blue bar and it doesn’t feel very in theme. Even though the title screen felt a bit bland, the special features surely made up for it.
All of this is to say, if you’re a physical media nut like myself and you haven’t picked anything up from Terror Vision, then what are you doing?! They have excellent releases like WNUF Halloween Special, Malum, Door, and so much more. And thanks to Terror Vision for all they’ve done, we can’t wait to see what you release next.
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