Dead, The (2010)

Directed by:
Howard J. Ford
Jonathan Ford

I remember just how striking it was seeing zombies shuffling across the African sand dunes, cast in silhouette by the orange light of dusk, in the Euro-trash cheapie OASIS OF THE ZOMBIES (1981). These solitary images stood out in what was otherwise a pretty useless, inept film. It seems the sibling filmmakers responsible for this one also saw that and knew there was a good film in there somewhere that could utilize those same memorable images to greater effect and put them to work in a better film, and that's exactly what we have here. As the film begins, we're in the midst of a worldwide zombie epidemic as an airplane carrying military and their families is heading across Africa and crashes into the ocean. American army flight engineer Lt. Brian Murphy (Rob Freeman) manages to get out of the wreck alive... but he's one of the few. Brian floats to shore on a crate and before he even has a chance to take a breath he spots zombies heading toward him from over the horizon. Two other survivors turn up; one seriously injured and the other, who's armed but runs off to save his own skin, but aren't of any help. Brian manages to break open the crate with a rock, gets his hands on a gun and then runs off into the dusty, thinly-forested mainland.

Meanwhile, local soldier Sgt. Daniel Dembele (Prince David Oseia) returns to his village only to discover his wife has been killed, his son has been whisked away somewhere by soldiers and that the sole remaining villager left behind is a dying old woman who will soon have to be down herself. Brian - an engineer and mechanic by trade - makes his way to the same village shortly after Daniel leaves. He fixes up an old, beat pickup truck while he's there and then hits the road. When he gets hung up in some rocks and finds himself surrounded by a horde of zombies, Daniel shows up save him. The two men then strike up a bargain. Brian wants to get to an airport, fix up a plane and leave Africa. Seeing how it's nearly impossible to survive on foot and he has to go all the way to a military base across the country to reunite with his son, Daniel wants the truck. Brian offers to give it to him if he'll lead him to the nearest airport. And thus the main plot thrust; a road trip of sorts across dangerous, desolate terrain amid a rather hopeless and grim situation with dwindling supplies (water, ammunition, etc.), is set in motion.

I won't go into a full-fledged slow zombies vs. fast zombies debate here, but I will say that slow zombies can be used particularly well as tools to generate tension and suspense for isolated scenes as well as for casting a unique, unrelentingly dangerous mood over the proceedings. Always in their quiet, lurching, never-ending pursuit of human flesh, slow zombies can frequently be present in the background and do not necessarily pose an immediate threat to the protagonists; at least in small numbers. In other words, they can be placed anywhere within frame without immediately sending the film's characters into Rambo-mode. There's that constant, ever-present, depressingly solemn reminder that these things are never going to go away. You can kill one easily enough, but there are always countless more nearby to take its place. We need things like food, water, rest, sleep. They never do... and they never stop searching... The makers of The Dead fully understand all of this. Unlike so many others making these kind of films nowadays, they actually get what is special about the slow zombie and know exactly how to effectively use them.

This is all clearly done with very-knowing reverence to what has come before it, particularly to the Romero series of films that began with the classic NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (1968) and was expanded upon brilliantly a decade later with his equally good follow-up DAWN OF THE DEAD (1978). Aside from carrying over the mythology and utilizing the dead in the same fashion to evoke a similar mood and many of the same emotions from viewers, this also sidesteps actually explaining the origins of the zombie epidemic. The best the characters have are their own theories and there's a sequence here set around a campfire where a village leader discusses what may have happened that's in clear tribute to the famous "When there's no more room in hell..." scene from Dawn. With its stuffily hot locations and native zombies, The Dead also recalls ZOMBI 2 (1979) to a degree, but it far surpasses what Fulci did when it comes to utilizing the natural landscapes; going from a beach to inland, where the dead lurk in huts, abandoned buildings and overgrown fields of high, dead corn stalks, to some really amazing looking high rock formations by the finale.

Though I quite enjoyed and appreciated the film overall and it falls soundly onto the "good" side of the flesh-eater spectrum, it doesn't have quite the depth, originality or inventiveness to elevate it to greatness. Though the acting isn't terrible, it's also not great. Only so much time is set aside to develop its characters and each of the two leads are given a standard push-along to be reunited with their families. The action becomes a wee bit repetitive in the middle, but thankfully things pick up again toward the end. The makeups are rather simple (slight undead pallor, some blood, blue contact lenses) but work well enough. The photography is rather nice throughout and though there's some use of shakycam, it's not overdone. All in all, they did a nice job here on a limited budget. Several production problems (camera equipment delivery delays, the lead actor contracting malaria while on location, etc.) ended up doubling the intended 6 week shooting schedule. It was filmed primarily in Ghana and Burkina Faso.

After debuting at FrightFest in the UK, The Dead played a limited theatrical run in the U.S. in 2011 before receiving a DVD release from Anchor Bay. The same filmmakers completed The Dead 2: India in 2013, which has also been acquired for distribution by Anchor Bay and will be out later this year.

★★★

L'uccello dalle piume di cristallo (1970)

... aka: Bird with the Crystal Plumage, The
... aka: Bird with the Glass Feathers
... aka: Gallery Murders, The
... aka: Phantom of Terror, The
... aka: Point of Terror

Directed by:
Dario Argento

After serving as a newspaper columnist, film critic and screenwriter (most notably of spaghetti westerns like the Sergio Leone-directed classic Once Upon a Time in the West [1968]), Argento borrowed around 500,000 dollars from his well-to-do father, film producer Salvatore Argento, to make this: his feature film debut. Bird ended up becoming a huge success; doubling its budget in Italy alone and also doing well in numerous other European countries, which ensured more of the same for the father / son team throughout the decade into the 80s. Bird is also noteworthy as being one of the establishing films in the subgenre of giallo, stylish and violent Italian murder-mysteries heavily influenced by a successful series of German mystery-thrillers called krimi, which were usually based on the writings of Edgar Wallace and themselves heavily influenced by such precursors as Robert Siodmak's The Spiral Staircases (1945), Henri-Georges Clouzot's Les diabloques (1955), Arne Mattsson's MANNEQUIN IN RED (1958) and numerous Alfred Hitchcock films. While Bird had been preceded by well over twenty other Italian films of this same type - most notably Mario Bava's THE GIRL WHO KNEW TOO MUCH (1963) an BLOOD AND BLACK LACE (1964) - its international success helped ensure a massive Bel Paese output of similar films, which had a particularly strong run from 1971 until 1975.

Tony Musante (who passed away late last year) stars as Sam Dalmas, an American writer staying in Rome  who's just finished a book on birds, collected his paycheck and is about to head home to the states. As he's walking home, he passes an art gallery and notices two figures; a woman and a man dressed in a black hat, gloves and raincoat, in the middle of a struggle. The woman - Monica Ranieri (Eva Renzi); co-owner of the gallery along with her husband Alberto (Umberto Raho) - is stabbed, stumbles down the stairs and lies bleeding on the ground. The man in black then runs off. When Sam attempts to rush to her aid, he becomes trapped inside two large glass doors and must wait there until he's able to flag down a pedestrian to phone the police. Inspector Morosini (Enrico Maria Salerno) and the rest of the police show up, Monica survives the attack and is taken to the hospital and Sam is taken to the station for questioning. Morosini promptly takes Sam's passport. You see, he's an important witness, the only witness, so he isn't going anywhere for the time being, especially since whoever attacked Monica may have also been responsible for at least three previous murders. After Sam leaves the station, the same black-clad attacker surprises him on the street; taking a swing at him with a large knife before fleeing into the night.

Sam's had quite the day. When he finally makes it back to his apartment, he recounts things for his model girlfriend Julia (British actress Suzy Kendall): "I just witnessed an attempted homicide, was given the third degree by the police, had my passport confiscated so now we can't leave and, uh, just now I had my head nearly decapitated by a meat cleaver. You know, the usual." He will also have quite the mystery on his hands to solve in the upcoming days and it'll need to be solved quickly before he (or Julia) become the latest victims. In the meantime, the killer keeps claiming new victims. Sam's dangerous quest to find out what's going on - which is actually encouraged by the police - leads to a stuttering incarcerated pimp (Gildo Di Marco), a flamboyant antiques dealer (Werner Peters), a yellow jacket wearing assassin (an unbilled Reggie Nalder), a goofy informant (Pino Patti), a reclusive, eccentric, cat-eating (!) artist (Mario Adorf) and others. Everything seems to be tied to a macabre painting depicting a woman being attacked and the killer, disguising their voice, taunts both the police and Sam with frequent threatening phone calls.

Bird is not the sex-and-violence sleaze-fest the later films would soon become. There's very little blood or violence, no sex and only one instance of partially-concealed nudity (a woman in a sheer nightie). In fact, this initially received a GP rating here in the U.S. The good news is that it doesn't need any of that to be perfectly entertaining and the direction and screenplay (which Argento based loosely on Fredric Brown's novel "The Screaming Mimi") are superior to most of what would come later. The actors play off each other well, the characters are enjoyable, the haunting score (composed by Ennio Morricone and conducted by Bruno Nicolai) is superb, there's a sense of humor that doesn't lessen the suspense or creepy moments and both the development of the mystery and the juggling of the red herrings are competently handled. It also manages to avoid crossing over into the realm of the ridiculous like most of the later films. All that said, this is neither inventive (conceptually, stylistically or otherwise) nor original enough to be the genre masterwork some make it out to be. It is simply a solidly-crafted, entertaining and above average film of its type.

The cast also includes "Raf Valenti" / Renato Romano (who appeared in many other gialli), "Rosa Toros" / Rosita Torosh as one of the victims, Fulvio Mingozzi and Giovanni Di Benedetto. The close-ups of the killer's hands are Argento's. UMC released a dubbed version in the U.S. in 1970 and it was later reissued under the title The Phantom of Terror by 21st Century in 1982. In Germany it was called Das Geheimnis der schwarzen Handschuhe ("The Secret of the Black Gloves"). There have been numerous VHS and DVD releases through the years and, in 2008, a Blu-ray from Anchor Bay.

Along with the follow-ups The Cat O' Nine Tails (1971) and FOUR FLIES ON GREY VELVET (1971), Bird comprised what would later be called Argento's "Animal Trilogy." Afterward, he worked on four episodes of the short-lived TV series "La porta sul buio" (filmed in 1971; released in 1973), then achieved even more commercial fame with Deep Red (1975) and Suspiria (1977).

★★★