Horror Movie Countdown to Halloween, Days 1 & 2: Romero

I am doing a countdown of horror movies this October. I’ll be posting images and quotes on my office door all month and also posting here. I’ll post one movie per day (two on Mondays and Fridays to account for the weekends), not in any ranked order. They are just horror movies I love in an order that pleases me.

I’m starting with George Romero. I didn’t even have to think about this as a starting point or about including either of these films on my list. Romero is just a given.

They’re coming to get you, Barbra!

I have taught Night of the Living Dead (1968) in multiple classes, and I love it. Students often have trouble getting into it because it’s kind of old-fashioned and slow by their standards, but I love the human drama, the slow zombies, the zombie daughter, and the bleak, bleak ending.

When there’s no more room in hell, the dead will walk the earth.

And I adore Dawn of the Dead (1978). Again, students don’t always appreciate it, but I love the very things that they have been critical of: the makeup, the weird musical montage where they play in the mall, the dramatic shifts in tone between parts of the movie, the Goblin score.

In both cases, the zombies are interesting, but the real draw is in the way the non-zombie human characters interact with one another as they try to survive – whether fighting or trying to set up house in a mall.

More to come!