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BudMan

10-30-2006, 08:16 AM

On a grey, damp day on the outskirts of Toronto's west end, amid the ruins of an industrial warehouse space, a slender, impossibly tall, silver-haired man weaves through a crowded soundstage, taking a long drag on a du Maurier cigarette. He sits down, alert but somewhat troubled, his eyes beaming behind a pair of bifocals that threaten to take over his entire face. It's somewhat difficult to believe that this kindly, quirky looking character is the man who in 1968 almost single-handedly changed the face of horror cinema.

A towering exercise in Grand Guignol excess (with elements lifted from Richard Matheson's popular mid-'50s pulp novel I am Legend) that doubled as a deft commentary on Vietnam-era America, the movie witnessed the advent of a nationwide zombie plague that turned its unsuspecting victims into relentless cannibalistic killing machines. Originally called The Night of Anubis, but later re-titled Night of the Living Dead, the iconic, deceivingly benign looking writer/director behind it was none other than George A. Romero, recently minted Toronto citizen and the undisputed archduke of the undead.

The 6-foot-5, 66-year-old film veteran is currently spleen deep in the thick of a four-week shooting schedule for Diary of the Dead, his latest foray into socially volatile flesh-eating mayhem. On this dismal October afternoon, Romero is stowed away in the bowels of the grimy back-alley set, struggling to wrap his head around a difficult (though, unfortunately for this bloodthirsty scribe, carnage-free) scene while attempting to suppress a deep, lingering cough.

"These don't help," laughs Romero, compulsively taking another drag of his cigarette, "but neither does this weather and really, I've been fighting this damn cold for weeks."

Diary of the Dead is the latest entry in Romero's beloved Dead series, which includes 1978's seminal Dawn of the Dead (an audacious Day-Glo masterpiece that in many ways surpasses its black-and-white predecessor); 1985's Day of the Dead; 1990's underrated Night of the Living Dead remake (written and produced by Romero and directed by effects guru Tom Savini); and 2005's Land of the Dead, also filmed in Toronto (after which Romero moved here full time). The new film charts the gory misadventures of a Winnebago load of fresh-faced film students (including The Exorcism of Emily Rose's Joshua Close and rising Canadian star Shawn Roberts) who unexpectedly find themselves documenting the apocalyptic genesis of yet another unstoppable undead revolution.

This weekend, Romero was scheduled to guide his crew through special-effects work, including zombie shots, on the film, which ostensibly offers more of the same extreme violence and pulse-pounding action of the previous instalments. But Romero wants this to be a much different entity.

"Diary of the Dead talks a lot about the media and this whole electronic eye that's everywhere out there, all the time," the director says. "And the main character (Close), well, you don't ever see this guy, he's a voyeur. The film argues about the importance of media, and status of someone in that position ... it's an entirely new take on my themes."

Indeed, what's always elevated his horror films several severed heads above his many imitators and contemporaries is the aging gutslinger's restless quest to inject heady doses of socio-political commentary and satire into his work. A zombie isn't just a zombie in Romero movies, it's a metaphor. So when Romero's hungry walking dead devour their victims and bathe in their spurting blood, it's usually a punchline to a joke about something beyond cheap, stomach-churning thrills.

For example, Dawn of the Dead skewers American consumer society as a quartet of heroes barricade themselves in a shopping mall, attempting to live as a family while the zombie population increases and ennui sets in. The follow-up Day of the Dead sees a skeleton crew of soldiers and medics studying the ghouls in an underground bunker. Though the doctors want to domesticate the creatures, the army wants to destroy them, leading to infighting, paranoia and Reagan-era melodrama (and the inevitable climactic zombie attack).

Diary of the Dead will be no exception to this metaphorically rich tradition, but it exists in a different world from the other films, creating a new storyline with slightly different rules of engagement.

"This film is an experiment, a rejigging of the myth," Romero says. "Basically it's also an attempt to re-establish a lucrative franchise. You know, we lost the copyright on Night and the others are owned by various people around the world. So we're really trying to start over with an idea that I've had for several years, and just do this thing under the radar as inexpensively as we can, and just see if it works."

Abandoning traditional third-person narrative style, the film is being shot in a kind of faux-documentary manner that, on the surface anyway, appears to be Romero's skin-ripping, politically charged answer to the shaky-cam antics of 1999's The Blair Witch Project. But the maverick genre auteur is quick to dispel any comparisons.

"It's not Blair Witch and my style is not Blair Witch, and it's not a purely visceral thing," Romero says. "My style is arch and theatrical, where Blair Witch went for ultra-realistic. Even though it IS shot first person, I'm trying to maintain the artifice and make some potent comments about the observer ... while still supplying lots of nasty zombie stuff."

With 16 films under his belt (including the Stephen King/EC Comics adaptation Creepshow and the psychological vampire thriller Martin), Romero has always worked best on the fringe, making financially successful and critically lauded cult movies at his speed, his way. But in 2005, the studio Universal stepped in to finance what would be the fourth official instalment of Romero's zombie series, the long in gestation, supposed final chapter, Land of the Dead. It saw Dennis Hopper portraying a Bush meets Trump-esque lunatic who protects the wealthy within the confines of his fortified luxury condominium in a vain attempt to block out the zombie holocaust. But the escalating population of starving, rotting ghouls have in turn become the victims and are, under the leadership of an undead gas station attendant, getting organized.

A clear parable of the "have nots" rising up against the decadence and arrogance of the "haves," Land was Romero's first fully studio-backed film, and although well reviewed and embraced by the fans, the movie's release was mishandled, and in turn was almost ignored at the box office. Odd, considering the same studio's remake of Romero's own Dawn of the Dead the previous year (also filmed here, and starring Sarah Polley) pulled in $102 million worldwide.

"Land was invisible. No one saw it," laments the director, still stung by the ordeal. "The U.S. marketing campaign was a dud, no posters went up in the theatres, the TV spots were barely there ... I think Universal really misunderstood the value of the picture, of its post-9/11 politics, of its fan appeal, and didn't know what to do with it."

But many of the director's devotees believe this return to his low-budget roots (Diary aims to come in at just under $5 million) will enable Romero to deliver the goods without fear of grand-scale commercial approval. Local film buff and zombie movie completist David ******* is optimistic.

"I'm really hoping for a return to the tone of my favourite Romero films in the past," ******* says, "and I'm glad he's using a relatively unknown cast. With Land of the Dead, the working formula was abandoned by using recognizable actors like Hopper and John Leguizamo and utilizing extensive CGI effects, which I think took many fans out of the moment."

This then begs the question — what does Romero, arguably the most cutting-edge horror filmmaker of his generation, think of mainstream Hollywood's current leanings toward glossy, violent remakes of classics (the aforementioned Dawn redux, Michael Bay's Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Amityville Horror makeovers) and hollow ripoffs?

"I don't go out of my way to watch them, I really don't," Romero says, sneering ever so slightly. "But you know, I don't let myself get up in arms about it either. Stephen King has a great answer to this question. If someone asks him how he feels about people in Hollywood ruining his novels, he responds by saying, `My books aren't ruined,' then he just points to his bookshelf and says, `They're right here!'

"And as far as what's new and trendy, I honestly don't give a damn. I've been disappointed for a long time that very few people do anything interesting with this genre except just, y'know, `cut 'em up.' That's been a sore point forever with me and it's something I've always attempted to rectify."

Diary of the Dead is aiming for a spring 2007 theatrical release. Here's hoping the master of the movie macabre gives the fans a weighty glob of what's been sorely missing from the modern horror film: brains.

Chris Alexander is a columnist for Canadian horror magazine Rue Morgue