Shock Value - Jason Zinoman [63]
Romero applies a mercilessly satiric touch. The politics in Night of the Living Dead was an accident, but Dawn of the Dead’s political statement was not. “Because of the critics, I knew we can’t do a zombie movie for the fuck of it,” Romero says. “It has to talk about the times, have a social point.”
While Night of the Living Dead maintained a somber tone of nihilistic doom, Dawn of the Dead laughed at itself merrily. The cannibalism and ripping of limbs was disgusting, knowing, and outrageously over-the-top. It was actually a much closer reflection of Romero’s sensibility than the grim dread of Night of the Living Dead. He was not a gloomy guy. For the European version, Romero said that Argento took out jokes that he thought wouldn’t work with an Italian audience. But the real noticeable change is the look of the movie, the black-and-white severity of the earlier zombie movie replaced by garish and bold hues. The Vietnam veteran and makeup guru Tom Savini assisted on the effects, but the bloody fingerprints of Argento are all over the movie.
The reviews were the best of his career, and a stark contrast in tone with the notices for Romero’s last zombie film. Roger Ebert, who was so dismissive of Night of the Living Dead, called the new movie “brilliantly crafted, funny, droll, and savagely merciless in its satiric view of the American consumer society. Nobody ever said art had to be in good taste.”
Notice the use of the term “art.” By making a second political zombie movie, Romero proved that Night was no fluke. He was an auteur with a vision, except his particular one involved the ripping off of limbs. The fact that both movies were deeply collaborative and that the idea that Romero was the sole author distorted as much as it illuminated did not change his reputation. Romero would be a master of horror for the rest of his career. Martin remains his favorite movie. As for Dawn of the Dead, he just laughs at the acclaim. “People thought it was such a subtle commentary,” he says, “but I don’t know what they were talking about. It was a pie in the face.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE DANCE OF DEATH
I just can’t take no pleasure in killing. There’s just some things you gotta do.
Old Man, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
SEVERAL SECONDS of blackness are broken up by a flash of light revealing a photo of the grimy yellowing fingernails of a corpse. Then one of a gooey limb, rotted white teeth, and an early daylight close-up of the head of a decaying body sitting on a gravestone. The camera retreats slowly, a vast and cloudy blue Texas landscape growing in size, and interrupted by gusts of smoke. Credits run alongside undulating deep red splashes of color on a dark background that looks like the rough draft of a doodle by an abstract expressionist. This disorienting opening sequence, filled with death and unlikely beauty, ends with a glowing full moon and an armadillo lying upside down on the side of the road. Welcome to a cracked world.
Watching The Texas Chain Saw Massacre for the first time can feel like trying to understand traffic zipping by on a highway. Who is that dead body? What are those red images? Who knows? After presenting this grotesque, surreal opening, the movie transitions to a tiny van. A band of hippies from Austin is visiting a graveyard. Sally Hardesty, the pretty blonde, is looking for the home of her grandfather. The director, Tobe Hooper, pauses to show images of local hicks and cows milling about. One lovely bright day on the road, the young kids pick up a greasy-haired hitchhiker with a lopsided grin. Within a few minutes, he masochistically cuts his hand, drawing blood, lights a fire, and relates some disgusting stories of his family’s work at the slaughterhouse. It’s an odd scene that operates like a warning out of a fairy tale delivered in the rough language of a home movie.
“[The Texas Chain Saw Massacre] looked like someone stole a camera and started killing people,” says Wes Craven, who