Night of the Living Dead (1968)

Start Time: 12:00 Noon

Director: George A. Romero
Unrated 96 min
Black & White

There's probably no movie more responsible for the birth of the modern horror film than George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead. It established the foundation upon which modern horror is built and set the standards by which it is judged. This low-budget, homegrown classic had great difficulty finding a distributor at the time of its release in 1968. Aside from its visceral impact years before realistic gore became the fashion, the film is also important for its portrayal of a black man as the protagonist during a time when race was an extremely sensitive issue in the United States.

Links of interest:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063350/
http://www.houseofhorrors.com/night68.htm
http://www.angryalien.com/0206/NOLDbuns.asp

 

Shaun of the Dead (2004)

Start Time: 2:00 PM

Director: Edgar Wright
Rated R for zombie violence/gore and language. 99 min

Although this British import has been more or less summarized as a Zombie parody, it’s a bonafide Zombie film. The humor is incredible and you will laugh until you nearly wet yourself, but the film is also quite scary. The Zombie gore and makeup isn’t comical—it’s pretty nasty. Ordinarily a film that is too funny to be horror and too frightening to be comedy receives criticism for its neither-here-nor-there quality. Shaun of the Dead, however, successfully blends comedy, horror, suspense, a killer soundtrack, and social commentary into ninety-nine minutes of cinematic sweetness.

Synopsis: Shaun doesn't have a very good day, so he decides to turn his life around by getting his ex to take him back, but he times it for right in the middle of what may be a zombie apocalypse... But for him, it's an opportunity to show everyone he knows how useful he is by saving them all. All he has to do is survive... And get his ex back.

Links of interest:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0365748/
http://www.shaunofthedead.com/

 

White Zombie (1932)

Start Time: 4:00 PM

Director: Victor Halperin
Unrated  67 min.
Black & White

White Zombie is one of the great unheralded horror classics of the 1930's and unfortunately, it is almost forgotten today, overrun by the modern flesh eating creatures that cloud the true history of Zombie lore. In fact, White Zombie may be the first and oldest surviving Zombie movie ever made. Unlike the modern movies of the genre that we grew up on, or can see today, these traditional Zombie characters are not evil in themselves, craving brains and devouring everything in their path. Instead, they are mindless wanderers, controlled by an evil shaman, who must be destroyed to save the Zombies from their helpless slumber.

Synopsis: Young couple Madeleine and Neil are coaxed by acquaintance Monsieur Beaumont to get married on his Haitian plantation. Beaumont's motives are purely selfish as he makes every attempt to convince the beautiful young girl to run away with him. For help Beaumont turns to the devious Legendre, a man who runs his mill by mind controlling people he has turned into zombies. After Beaumont uses Legendre's zombie potion on Madeleine, he is dissatisfied with her emotionless being and wants her to be changed back. Legendre has no intention of doing this and he drugs Beaumont as well to add to his zombie collection. Meanwhile, grieving 'widower' Neil is convinced by a local priest that Madeleine may still be alive.

Links of interest:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0023694/
http://www.archive.org/details/white_zombie

Fido (2006)

Start Time: 5:30 PM

Director: Andrew Currie
Rated R for zombie-related violence. 91 min.

A full-blown social satire with Zombies at its center equal part Lassie, old TV sit-coms, and 1950s movie melodramas, Fido’s milestone in the history of Zombie films is the fact that, outside Romero's Living Dead films, this is one of the few efforts to advance the sub-genre on a conceptual level. The Zombie rules are clearly borrowed from the archetype laid out in Night Of The Living Dead (the school kids even recite a rhyme to remind them to aim for the head, not the heart), but Fido uses this set-up to go in its own direction by asking a fascinating "What if...?" question: "What if Zombies could be domesticated?" Romero himself toyed with this idea in Day of the Dead, but his characters never got the chance to put it into practice. Now Fido shows us the results - imaginative, weird, funny, and fascinating.

Synopsis: Set in a quiet 1950s suburban neighborhood, where the grass is always green and everything is pleasantly upbeat. The Robinson family has recently aquired their first zombie: Dad is phobic about the creatures, but Mom insists that their family not be the only one on the block without one, especially since the head of security at ZomCom has just moved in across the street. Little Timmy, a lonely boy picked on by his peers at school, befriends the family servant and names him Fido. Unfortunately, a malfunction with Fido's collar results in his attacking and killing a neighbor, setting off a chain reaction of events that results in ZomCom recalling the zombie for use in their factory. But Timmy refuses to give up on his friend and sets out to rescue him...

Links of interest:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0457572/
http://www.fidothefilm.com

Night of the Living Jews(2007)

Start Time: 7:05 PM

Director: Oliver Noble
Unrated 17 min.

Oliver Noble grew up in New York's Hudson Valley and has been making movies since grade school with his friend, cinematographer Sam Falconi. He quit high school after the ninth grade to pursue filmmaking full-time, working in different capacities on short and feature films. With the help of the local film community, Oliver has directed several shorts, which have played at film festivals including the Directors View. He is currently working on three short films he will be directing for Heeb Magazine.

Synopsis: On the first night of Passover the residents of a remote Jewish bungalow colony are turned into flesh eating zombies by matzo with a dark history. In the hunt for human flesh, the zombies descend on an unsuspecting family in their quiet farmhouse. The loving mother (Alexandra Angeloch), father (Phillip Levine), along with their rascally son James (Adam Forrest) and naively seductive teenage daughter Sally (Sierra DeCrosta), have to tap into their deepest survival instincts to battle Hasidic zombies, killer payos (that's right, those little curly side-burns), and antler-sporting zombie rabbis. It's really the beginning of the end when a fairly tall but not so dark stranger (Nate Earl), who knows the situation all too well, miraculously appears. Journey through their hellish night of terror, romance, and a frighteningly non-kosher diet.

Links of interest:

http://www.nightofthelivingjews.com/

Brain Dead (2008)

Start Time: 8:00 PM

Director: Kevin S. Tenney
Unrated 95 min

Still on the festival circuit cut and as yet unreleased, Kevin Tenney’s (director of some genre classics like Night of the Demons and Witchboard) Brain Dead has all the campy, silly humor and that compelling horror/Zombie recipe that delivers the goods. With more brains being split open, shot gun blasted and greedily consumed by evil, demented alien-Zombies, you’ll lose count. A veritable blood bath and an ongoing cacophony of severed limbs, gigantic holes punched through skulls and, well, a charming little tale…  Zombies, hotties and explosive graphic violence and gore? You will not be disappointed. This film serves up sweet breads by the bucket!

Synopsis: Clarence Singer, a local smart ass and trouble maker, handcuffed to Bob Jules, a hardened criminal, is forced to tag along when Bob brutally kills a deputy and escapes from the sheriff's transport van in the middle of nowhere. Sherry Morgan and Claudia Bush, a couple of attractive medical students, get lost while hiking through the mountains and end up at a deserted fishing lodge where Clarence and Bob are hiding. Bob takes the women hostage and rummages through their backpacks for food as another couple approaches the lodge, Reverend Eldon Farnsworth, a middle-aged televangelist with car trouble, and Amy Smoots, his pretty, young assistant. They, too, are taken hostage by Bob. Sydney Moyes, a local forest ranger, finds the remains of one of the fisherman from the lodge and investigates, leading to a violent gunfight with Bob. Sydney gets the drop on Bob, but before she can shoot him, a monstrous, humanoid creature attacks and devours her brain. Now the alien-controlled zombies are stalking the woods, killing or converting anyone who tries to leave. The remaining survivors soon realize that with no escape and no way to contact the outside world for help, the shelter they sought earlier may now become their tomb.

Links of interest:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0914799/
http://www.10ebrothers.com/BrainDead.html

28 Days Later(2002)

Start Time: 10:30 PM

Director: Danny Boyle
Rated R for strong violence and gore, language and nudity.
113 min.

Employing a hazy, grainy video stock, the look of 28 Days Later seems manifest of the collapsing social and moral structures its characters are forced to reckon with. Structurally, the film is a near-perfect example of economic storytelling and not your archetypal Zombie movie. The sheer ferocity and unexpectedness of each and every Zombie attack means that there are plenty of truly terrifying moments, so even the quieter moments do not enable the viewer to relax. The long silences between bursts of violence allow for empathy for the film's characters so like all good horror films, when one of the heroes is struck down it actually means something. Danny Boyle has created a must see addition to the apocalyptic/Zombie genre.

Synopsis: Waking from a coma in a deserted London hospital 28 days later, bicycle courier Jim takes to the deserted city streets in a state of mystified confusion. Joining forces with another group of survivors following a terrifying encounter in a seemingly abandoned church, Jim soon learns the truth behind the deserted streets and the menacing creatures that lurk in the shadows. It's soon revealed that the chimpanzees had been harboring a deadly virus that sends its victims into a furious, murderous rage, and in the days following the initial exposure, the entire population was nearly wiped out due to the resulting homicidal rampage. Is there still a glimmer of hope for humanity -- or has the deadly "rage" virus found its way to foreign shores and infected the entire planet?

Links of interest:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0289043

Dead Residence(2007)

Start Time: 12:15 AM

Director: Jared Balog
Unrated 15 min.

Jared Balog, 23 years old, from Troy New York has been making films since he was 8 years old. Original wanting to be a special make-up effect artist, at 14 Jared found that directing was more satisfying. Jared has since worked on several low-budgets productions in and around the capital region.

"If a man die, shall he live again?  No one ever thought an answer to this question would be yes.  By man came great technology and advancements in medicine.  By man came also the resurrection of the dead.  The resurrection consisted of reuniting impulses from the brain to the nervous systems of a body of flesh and bones.  Graves were opened and many bodies arose, and those who have slept in their graves came forth.  The resurrection came to all in a small upstate city in New York, Albany.  A blockade was setup a mile outside the city to keep the incident isolated. And when we were sent in to eradicate the living dead we didn't think there were  going to be any problems."

Links of interest:

http://www.splatterproductions.20m.com/deadresmain.htm