6/10/14 (Part One): The Men Who Make the Nightmares

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behind-the-scenes, blood-button effect, Bob Kurtzman, Day of the Dead, Dick Smith, documentaries, documentary, Donna Davies, Elijah Wood, Frank Darabont, George Romero, golden age of special effects, Greg Nicotero, Gross Anatomy, Howard Berger, Jack Pierce, John Carpenter, John Landis, KNB Effects, Kurtzman, Lon Chaney, Nightmare Factory, practical effects, Quentin Tarantino, Ray Harryhausen, Rick Baker, Robert Kirkman, Robert Kurtzman, Robert Rodriguez, Sam Raimi, special effects, special effects pioneer, Tom Savini, visual effects, writer-director-producer

When one is discussing the most influential special effects/make-up/visual effects artists in the business, there are a few names that always seem to come up: Tom Savini…Rick Baker…Stan Winston…Ray Harryhausen (RIP). Look closely, however, and you’ll notice another trio of names that seem to pop up in every other end credit scroll for the past several decades: Greg Nicotero, Howard Berger and Bob Kurtzman. Although they have plenty of individual credits to their name, the three would go on to form KNB Effects, one of the most influential and omnipresent effects studios to emerge since Lucas’ groundbreaking Industrial Light and Magic. Donna Davies’ fun and informative documentary, Nightmare Factory, takes an up-close-and-personal look at KNB Effects, with particular emphasis on co-founder Greg Nicotero, sfx godfather Tom Savini’s protegé.

Kicking off with a “greatest-hits” highlight reel that amounts to a fan-pleasing gore clip show (complete with pounding metal soundtrack), Nightmare Factory makes one thing abundantly clear: this one is aimed right at the genre fans who geek out on fantastic monsters, severed limbs, spurting blood, explosions and puppetry. We go through the history of KNB, which begins with the history of its key players: Greg Nicotero, Howard Berger and Bob Kurtzman. While we don’t get a whole lot of Kurtzman, who left the company a decade into its existence, we do get a whole lot of Nicotero and quite a bit of Berger. Luckily, Nicotero is an absolutely fascinating person, a life-long film and genre fan who’s devoted his entire life to making the impossible real. Long before KNB Effects was a twinkle in anyone’s eye, Nicotero and his younger brother, Bryan, were making their own movies, perfecting stunts, devising effects and props and, in general, being pretty amazing. A chance encounter with George Romero (during a family vacation in Rome, no less) led the 16-year-old Greg to a tour of Romero’s Dawn of the Dead (1978) shopping mall set and an offer to work on his next film, Day of the Dead (1985). This, in turn, led to Nicotero meeting effects god Tom Savini and the rest, as they say, is history.

After meeting and becoming friends on the set of Day of the Dead, Nicotero and Berger ended up moving in with a friend of Berger’s named Robert Kurtzman. The three became fast friends on the set of Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead 2 (1987) which led to the realization that they might be able to make something bigger of this. KNB Effects was born and, within short order, became a powerhouse in the world of movie special effects, particularly in the effects-heavy era of the late-’80s and early-’90s. KNB Effects reach was so widespread, in fact, that it extended to decidedly non-genre offerings like Gross Anatomy (1989) and Oscar-winner Dances with Wolves (1990). In fact, you’d be pretty hard-pressed to find a film with any kind of practical effect within the past 30 years that didn’t bear the mark of either KNB Effects, Nicotero, Berger or Kurtzman: the guys were just that ubiquitous in the industry! Some of the best parts of the film involve the footage of KNB Effects heyday in the late ’80s, where the studio had a wild, rock ‘n roll, party-hard attitude: most of the effects artists were also in rock bands, hung out together constantly, partied the night away and made monsters during the daytime. For a guy like me, this looked like pretty much the best place to work in the entire world. Fuck crazy Wall Street firms: the shenanigans at KNB looked like a whole lot more fun!

Although KNB Effects is just about as important as effect studios get (they even created the “blood-button” effect that has allowed generations of indie filmmakers to create gunshots on the cheap), the times are always changing and we feel the effects of this within the doc. Studios now want effects as quickly and cheaply as possible: there’s no longer time to lovingly craft effects in the same way that the artisans did twenty years before. While computer-generated imagery is a valuable tool when used hand-in-hand with practical effects, the tendency these days is to heavily rely on CGI, which can be much quicker and cheaper to utilize than practical effects but tends to have a disarmingly glossy hyper-reality that is no patch on the oftentimes rougher practical effects of bygone eras. It’s certainly a devil’s dilemma: filmmakers are always in a desperate need to save money, which makes CGI the only feasible reality for many low-budget productions, yet cheap CGI makes any film look bad, regardless of the general quality of the production.

There’s also the sad revelation, late in the film, that Nicotero doesn’t really think anyone will come around to replace them: no one has a burning desire to just make monsters these days, he says, at least not like in the days of Famous Monsters of Film Land, Ray Harryhausen and Tom Savini (at 68, Savini is now the elder statesman who used to be the infant terrible…he even has his own special effects training school). We do get to see a few members of the younger generation who were influenced by the ’70s-’80s pioneers, such as Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg and Robert Rodriguez, although we don’t really get to meet any of the new generation to whom Nicotero and the others will be passing their torch.

While Nicotero certainly has a history and perspective on the situation that I’ll never possess, I can’t help but feel that he’s dead wrong in that aspect: there will always be kids around who want to make monsters. As long as there are geeky outsiders who spend their childhoods reading monster magazines under the blankets, there will be special effects people. As long as there are kids who create backyard zombie epics featuring the contents of their fridge and an ocean of passion, there will be special effects people. We may very well come to a time when practical effects are no longer utilized in mainstream cinema, where CGI has become the all-encompassing cinematic creative force and where model-makers are as quaint as town criers. Hell, we may already be there. As long as there are still kids who grow up with the burning desire to make the magic themselves, however, to mold the clay and set the fuses and paint the models, to bring life to dead objects in the same way that Dr. Frankenstein once did…as long as these kids are still around, there will always be someone to carry on the flag. Nightmare Factory serves as a wonderful reminder of just what an important tradition this really is and a truly loving salute to those who continue to keep the tradition alive.

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5/19/14: Everything Old is New Again

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Bill Moseley, black and white film, cinema, color vs black & white, film reviews, films, George Romero, horror, horror films, isolated estates, isolation, Katie Finneran, McKee Anderson, Michael Haneke, Movies, Night of the Living Dead, Patricia Tallman, practical effects, remakes, special effects pioneer, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the living dead, Tom Savini, Tom Towles, Tony Todd, William Butler, zombie movies, zombies

As a general rule, I’m not a fan of film remakes, especially remakes of classic or iconic films. I can see the merit, to a point, in remaking a bad or compromised film, especially if you were a fan of the original…sort of a take two, if you will. Remaking a well-made, well-received film, however, seems completely pointless. I’ll go to the grave stating that no modern audience member will die if they’re forced to watch something that’s more than a few years old. I promise: sitting through a black and white film or something from any of the various decades before 2010 will not cause internal bleeding, memory loss or phantom limb syndrome.

With that being said, however, I’m a little more ambivalent when it comes to filmmaker remaking their own films. While this seems like kind of an odd, specific situation, it has happened a few times, usually when a popular foreign director makes the transition to Hollywood films: German misery merchant Michael Haneke remade his original Funny Games (1997) as an American version in 2007; Takashi Shimizu remade Ju-On (2002) as The Grudge (2004) for American audiences;  George Sluizer turned Spoorloos (1988) into The Vanishing (1993); and Ole Bornedal’s Nattevagten (1994) became the Ewan McGregor starring Nightwatch (1997). In each of these instances, the originals were popular films, especially on the festival circuit, which prompted American remakes to capitalize on the buzz (although it’s interesting to note that Haneke waited a decade between his versions of Funny Games): the thought, it seems, is that American audiences aren’t big on reading subtitles, since some of these films are only different by virtue of the language spoken. The 1990 remake of George Romero’s iconic Night of the Living Dead doesn’t really fit any of these bills but it’s also the furthest thing from something like the modern remakes of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre or Friday the 13th, since Romero produced, wrote the screenplay and handpicked the director: special effects pioneer Tom Savini.

If you’ve never seen the original Night of the Living Dead (1968), your first move should be to go watch that, right away: I’ll wait. All done? Excellent. Here’s what you saw: a raw, visceral, black and white nightmare that’s equal parts siege picture and sly social commentary, the kind of film that features a child consuming her mother and a black hero (in 1968, no less) who survives the zombies only to be shot dead by rednecks. It’s an independent film in every sense of the word, featuring a bunch of amateur filmmakers wearing as many hats as they can pile on their heads and going for broke in a way that only hungry, young artists can. It’s an unmitigated classic, almost singlehandedly responsible for nearly 50 years of zombie movies.

Remaking a film like Night of the Living Dead doesn’t seem like such an impossible task: after all, the first film was a crude, zero-budget production where local business people who donated funds took on roles as zombies, newscasters, police, etc. It was a black and white film that required gore effects at a time when that just wasn’t the norm. With all of the advances in filmmaking technology, special effects and computer-generated effects, making something like Night of the Living Dead in this modern era should be easy. The problem, of course, is that Night of the Living Dead was a labor of love: it was a real film that became a classic, similar to Hooper’s original Texas Chainsaw or Cunningham’s Friday the 13th (1980). Catching lightning is a bottle twice is no easy feat: manufacturing impact and meaning is impossible.

For the most part, Savini’s remake of Night of the Living Dead isn’t drastically different from Romero’s original but there are a few subtle changes/differences. The film still takes place in an abandoned farmhouse in the middle of nowhere, although the place now looks like a cross between the Sawyer homestead in Texas Chainsaw and Norman’s taxidermy-crammed residence in Psycho (1960). We still get Barbara but Patricia Tallman’s version is a huge improvement from Judith O’Dea’s original: this Barbara is no catatonic babe-in-the-woods but an ass-kicking “final girl,” more Ellen Ripley than doe-eyed victim. Her character development feels very organic, although the scene where she trades her skirt for a pair of pants seems a bit on the nose. Ben is still here but Tony Todd’s version is more of an angry, shouty bloke, not too far removed from Tom Towles’ obnoxious Harry Cooper. This version of Harry manages something that I’d always felt impossible and actually makes the character more repellent and crude: as portrayed in Savini’s version, Harry Cooper is a Jersey Shore-meathead, a ridiculous character who’s just one “You’ze guyz!” away from being a complete stereotype.

This, then, isn’t a carbon-copy of the original, aside from the obvious color vs black and white issue. While many of the ideas and themes from Romero’s original have been kept (Romero did, after all, write the screenplay for the remake), there are many aspects that have been changed completely. The horror of Barbara confronting her own zombified brother has been done-away with in the remake by having her come across his already dead body: it robs a chance for some genuine emotion from the story and feels like a surely missed opportunity. Whereas the original had Ben survive the ordeal only to killed by humans the following morning, the remake does away with this, as well: Barbara is the final survivor and Ben emerges from the house as an obvious zombie, only to be shot and killed by the rednecks. This is a subtle but big difference: in the remake, there’s no mistaking Ben for a zombie and the kill is just about as necessary as you get. In the original, however, it’s never made clear whether Ben is killed because the trigger-happy rednecks think he’s actually a zombie or because they see an opportunity to kill a black man without penalty. Barbara is the one, in the remake, who gets to use the zombie apocalypse for her own ends: when the loathsome Harry Cooper emerges, unscathed, Barbara calmly and coldbloodedly shoots him, proclaiming him another zombie. In this instance, there’s no mistaking her intent, as with the rednecks killing Ben: she means to get vengeance for Harry’s assholery. Whereas the final scene in the original finishes off Ben’s character arc, the final scene in the remake finishes off Barbara’s character arc: a different focus for a different era, as it were.

For all of the subtle differences between the two versions, both Romero and Savini’s Night of the Living Deads are remarkably similar. For my money, though, the original still has more impact: there’s something that’s undeniably sad, lonely and terrifying about the original and I can’t help but feel is has something to do with the black and white. The cinematography in Savini’s remake is often quite good, don’t get me wrong, but it’s never very evocative. There’s very little atmosphere in the film and it functions much more as an action film than an honest-to-god horror movie. The effects and makeup in the remake, as expected, are excellent, although I found quite a bit of the prosthetic work to be a little rough: there’s one damned rubber hand that seems to make an appearance everywhere and it never looks like anything more than a cheap haunted house prop. I was actually surprised to find that the effects work and gore seemed a little tamer in the remake than the original, something which made no sense to me until I read that Savini’s remake was severely edited to earn an R rating: that makes a lot more sense. Still, what’s here is suitably excellent, although there isn’t anything groundbreaking. Careful observers might also note that the ending seems to prefigure Romero’s later Diary of the Dead (2007), with zombies being used for target practice and as opponents against human wrestlers/fighters.

Ultimately, Savini’s remake stands as a well-made but, ultimately, rather pointless exercise, aside from the obvious benefit of putting more funds into Romero’s coffer. Since his copyrighting issues with the original film resulted in the almost complete loss of any exhibition revenues, it’s only fitting that he would get a “second chance,” as it were, via the remake. Some of the changes strike me as worthy: It’s always refreshing to have a more feminist take on female characters in horror films, so the remaking of Barbara as strong heroine strikes me as a great, welcome change from the original: I always found the original character to be one of the weakest, most pewling characters in cinema. At the end of the day, however, Savini’s Night of the Living Dead is still the same film about a small band of survivors trapped in a farmhouse by the living dead that Romero’s was. Romero’s film may have been the more impactful, personal and iconic of the two but that should be a given: a perfect copy of a Picasso will never be worth as much as a Picasso…unless you don’t know it’s a copy, that is. Savini’s film is obviously a copy but, in this case, that’s probably alright.